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What is RSS?

  "Contact" Newspaper RSS for latest news stories

What is RSS?

RSS is a family of web feed formats. 

In "RSS" or Really Simple Syndication, a content provider (such as the "Contact")publishes a feed link on their site,

With a  "feed reader or a news reader program," that is running on your computer, often the RSS link can be added to the reader by simply dragging the link from a web browser to the reader.

Then when the reader is instructed, it downloads new content automatically. Your readers can be scheduled to check for new content that has been posted periodically.

Often when websites provide web feeds to notify users of content updates, they only include summaries in the web feed rather than the full content itself.

To Start

You will need a "feed reader"—this is a tool like an email program. It's like getting an email every time one of your RSS subscriptions updates its content, except that no email address is required.

There are many feed readers—some are online (like a webmail account), some are offline (you download the program to your computer), some are free and some aren't.

If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you have a feed reader. You can also add content from any site with feeds to your page to get updates. Such as this new one for the Oklahoma Conference newspaper The "Contact"

Another free reader is Bloglines, which is easy to get started with.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. Internet Explorer 7.0 has this feature as well.

Attensa for Outlook is a feed reader that puts the feeds in Microsoft Outlook.

Visit RSS Compendium to locate other readers.

How to add feeds to your feed reader

First, look for the subscription or feed links labelled RSS or they may have an orange button like the one for the "Contact at the top of this page"

Then, you can either click the relevant links (e.g. the "add to my Yahoo!" button, if you're using My Yahoo!, Google too!) or copy-paste the link in to your feed reader.