How do I
subscribe to a news feeds?
Step one is to download a news reader. (What
is a news reader?)
Point your news reader to the
addresses below for each feed you want to subscribe
to. You may also copy and paste the".xml" link into
your newsreaders subscribe area.
This FAQ will show you how, and will answer
some of the common questions about RSS and
News feeds.
-
What is a news
feed?
-
What is a news
reader?
-
Should I use a
news reader?
-
What is RSS?
-
What is
syndication?
What is a
news feed?
A news feed (also known as an
RSS feed) is a listing of a website's content. It is
updated whenever new content is published to the
site. News readers "subscribe" to news feeds, which
means they download lists of stories at an interval
that you specify (every 30 minutes, for example),
and present them to you in your news reader. A news
feed might contain a list of story headlines, a list
of excerpts from the stories, or a list containing
each story from the website (DDEC news feeds contain
Educational articles and news excerpts). All news
feeds will have a link back to the website, so if
you see a headline / excerpt / story you like, you
can click on the link for that piece of content and
will be taken to the website to read it.
What is a news
reader?
A news reader (also known as
a news aggregator) allows you to view the articles,
headlines and information coming from the feed you
subscribed to. It is to news feeds what Outlook,
Thunderbird and Netscape Mail are to email..
Should I
use a news reader?
The short answer: it depends.
The longer answer: if you
visit a lot of websites on daily basis, or read a
lot of weblogs (or "blogs"),
a news reader can save you a lot of time. Sites like
ABCNews.com
,
Salon , and the
New York Times all
have syndicated feeds.
Using a news reader to
consume your web media means that you only need to
visit a website when you read a story in your news
reader that is of interest to you. You won't have to
visit many sites multiple times every day to see if
there are updates; your news reader will do that for
you and will let you know when there is a new story
to be read!
Some commonly used news
readers are
Blogbridge,
Sharp Reader
,
NewsGator (an
Outlook plugin) for Windows and
Feed Demon
.
Yahoo
and
Google also offer
web based readers
What is RSS?
RSS stands for "Really Simple
Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary".
A RSS feed (also known as a
news
feed ) is a site's syndicated news feed
that you subscribe to using your news reader.
What is syndication?
Syndication refers to the
process that occurs when a publisher provides
content in a form that can be consumed by software
(like a news reader).
DDEC (the publisher)
publishes a story about an Author, an Event or
relevant information (the content).
Your
news
reader (the software).
Back to top
