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How To........
What Is RSS? I am making the (not unreasonable) assumption that you are comfortable with technology, otherwise you would not be surfing the net right now. With that in mind, I am going to make a further assumption that you are open to discovering new and better ways of retrieving information over the internet.
One new area of technology that
you might not be familiar with is RSS. Although it's been around for
a few years, it's one of those little gems that many users either
don't know about or choose to ignore completely because it seems
'too hard'. Well, actually it is incredibly simple to use and is the
answer to every family historians dream.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it allows you to subscribe to websites like this one to have new content delivered to you. This means that you won’t have to remember the addresses to all the websites you like, and you won’t have to go looking around on a site to see what’s new. If anything new is added, you can find out within minutes and look at it on your own time. Sounds good, right?
But what is it, exactly? RSS automatically summarizes new content added to websites and transfers it into a “feed.” This feed itself is written in computer language, but a software tool called a news aggregator (included in some web browsers, or available as free downloads) makes them readable by humans and organizes them in one place. You can go to your aggregator and read all of the new content from every website that holds your interest.
You probably visit a lot of websites that have RSS. Most news sites do, including Yahoo! News, the BBC, and The New York Times. Most blogs have RSS too, and so do many other websites. You can tell if a website has RSS by looking for the orange box. Usually it's orange, but occasionally other colors.
So now that you know what RSS is, you want to get it, right? It’s easy. First decide what news aggregator you want to use. Some popular web based ones are Bloglines, MyYahoo!, and NewsGator. Or a good place to start if you have a Windows based computer is www.rssreader.com. For a Macintosh computer it's ranchero.com/netnewswire Each of those come with download and installation instructions. When your news aggregator is set up, all you have to do is visit your favorite websites, find the RSS graphic, and subscribe to the feeds – it’s usually a one-step process.
And that’s it! Now all new content that you subscribed to will be delivered right to you, and you can read it whenever you have time.
A great way to keep up to date with new technology is to subscribe to www.digitalgenealogist.com.The cost is $20 per year for 6 emailed issues. It's in PDF format so it has live links. The first issue came out in November 2006.
Access these other pages from here:
Copyright © 2006 Wayne Thomas |
Clue #5 - Digital technology is there to help you help yourself.