RSS Explained
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RSS Overview
What does the orange radio signal icon mean?
The simplest analogy for understanding RSS is that it lets you subscribe to an Internet source of information like you subscribe to a newspaper or magazine.
When the latest issue of a magazine is published, you could go to a local store to buy it, or you could save time and money by having it delivered in the mail.
RSS is akin to subscribing to the magazine rather than going to the store. You no longer have to visit a site every day to get all the latest content.
Perhaps you regularly visit Dr. Linda Main's Slis21 blog, and don't want to miss a posting?
Blog posts come at irregular intervals: some days there are more than one, other days there are none. Rather than check every day, RSS does it for you.
RSS will tell you when you have new content from:
- Blogs
- Podcasts
- News Feeds
- Digital content services for items such as recent videos or photos
- Updates to listings, like the LIBR 294 Internship new listings feed
See list of SLIS RSS feeds at SJSU SLIS Social Web.
Which RSS subscription type to use?
How you subscribe to an RSS feed depends on software and your personal preferences.
- Do you want the feed to go to your email inbox, or do you want it as a favorite in your browser?
- Browser-based: Firefox (recommended for security conscious web surfers) or IE8, or Safari for Mac users.
- RSS feed aggregator service. You would need to visit the RSS feed aggregator of your choice to see the latest postings from the feeds your subscriptions. Examples of two popular RSS feed aggregators are Bloglines and Google Reader. A full list is at Comparison of feed aggregators
.
Tutorials: How to Get RSS
The links listed below give step by step instructions for subscribing to an RSS feed with various applications:
SJSU SLIS Blogs
See information about SLIS blogs at Overview of SLIS Blogs. The most important blog to subscribe to for SLIS is Dr. Main's Slis21 blog.
SJSU SLIS Podcasts
The SJSU SLIS Colloquia Series Presentations are available through either the Colloquia RSS Feed,
or the SLIS Colloquia iTunes Portal .
The iTunes Portal link requires that you have iTunes installed on your computer.
Most podcasts are available in both audio and video versions.
See the iTunes tutorial for help in subscribing to Colloquia podcasts using iTunes.
See the Subscription tutorials for help subscribing to Colloquia podcasts using RSS.
Get Important General SLIS News Info Via RSS
Consider subscribing to the SLIS News & Announcements feed, which is a limited selection of email sent to the SLISadmin list. The feed has the textual content of general interest messages sent to SLISadmin. As a student, you must register for the SLISadmin electronic list to get everything, but you may want to also subscribe to the limited RSS feed below.
Links to More Information
- Wikipedia: RSS - A entry with XML examples.
- IE8: How to Add Feeds and WebSlices to the Favorites Bar - Tech-Recipes, a tutorial IE8 users.
- Live Bookmarks instructions for Firefox from Mozilla.
- GEEKZONE: Internet Explorer 7 and RSS Feeds - A tutorial specifically for IE7 users.
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