Introduction

If you already know about RSS feeds, then all you need to know about subscribing to the Gumnuts Web Log feed or to the Australian Plants online update feed is to choose an action below.

For Gumnuts, do one of the following:

• Drag this RSS logo into your news aggregator.
• Copy and paste this URL into your news aggregator:
  http://www.blognow.com.au/rss.php?w=gumnuts
• Have your news aggregator search for feeds in this page.

For Australian Plants online update, do one of the following:

• Drag this RSS logo into your news aggregator.
• Copy and paste this URL into your news aggregator:
  http://asgap.org.au/apol.xml
• Have your news aggregator search for feeds in this page.

Now ..... if all of the above could have been written in Klingon for all the sense it makes, read on.....

What does RSS stand for?

The most commonly accepted definition is "Really Simple Syndication" but you will also find RSS referred to as Rich Site Summary.

In general terms, however, RSS is usually just called a 'feed".

But....it doesn't really matter what RSS stands for. What matters is....

What is RSS used for?

RSS is a tool for sharing and distributing web content such as news, as well as the content of other web pages that are updated regularly. It allows users to keep informed of a website's latest changes and simplifies keeping in touch with topics that a user is interested in. This is done by use of software called a 'News Aggregator' or "Feed Reader" that scans the content of websites for updates and then displays any updated items that are found.

News aggregators can be either stand-alone applications or they can be add-ons to a web browser - more about aggregators later.

Of course, if you just want to keep track on a few webpages or web logs (blogs), then it is easy to do this manually by just bookmarking those sites in your web browser and visiting the sites regularly. RSS and the use of a news aggregator becomes handy when you have a lot of sites that you would like to keep up to date with. RSS feeds can even be read on Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones.

One of the main advantages of blogs and RSS feeds is that they are instantaneous. For example, you don't have to wait 4-6 weeks for each issue of the 'Gumnuts' newsletter to be published, as was the case previously. They are also less time demanding on the webmaster (a major consideration, I'm sure you'll agree.....).

It's difficult to explain the benefits to be gained by making use of RSS feeds - you really need to try it out. Most people find them indispensable.

As an example..... Apart from Australian native plants my other main interest is photography. There are lots of blogs that cover photography and related topics and I like to keep in touch with all the latest information on new equipment, image processing, exhibitions, competitions, etc. To do this I have subscribed to the RSS feeds for these blogs and, whenever I go on line I just let my news aggregator poll those sites and let me know which ones have been updated since the last time I checked. I can then check out the new information quickly and easily (or not - if the items are of no interest). Other "feeds" I have subscribed to include The Sydney Morning Herald and selected Ebay sellers.

Choosing and Using a News Aggregator

There are many news aggregators available, including commercial, shareware and freeware applications. As mentioned above they can be stand-alone applications or plug-ins to a web browser.

The following briefly describes one of each type, but you will find many others for various operating systems by doing a web search. For what it's worth, I use Sage because it works in a normal web browser environment and that's more comfortable from my point of view.

Snarfer

Snarfer is a freeware, stand alone aggregator that is small and easy to set up. It can be downloaded from Snarfware LLC and requires Windows XP or greater.

Here's a screen capture of the Snarfer interface.

The left hand panel lists the feeds that I have subscribed to with the "Gumnuts" feed highlighted. The right panel lists items that have been published recently in the Gumnuts blog. To read the details of any item I simply double click the item and Snarfer produces a panel with the full item displayed. It also provides an option to allow me to go to the actual item on the Gumnuts blog in case I want to enter a comment, for example.

Snarfer checks for new updates every hour, so the usual way of using it would be to have it load when Windows starts and let it work in the background while you do other things.

Sage

Sage is a free feed reader extension for Mozilla Firefox and it integrates seamlessly into Firefox. Sage can be installed directly into Firefox from the Sage website

Here's a screen capture of the Sage/Firefox interface.

After installation, a "Sage" option is added to the Firefox 'Tools' menu. The subscribed feeds appear in the upper part of the left hand panel and the title of each item in the currently selected feed appears in the lower part of that panel. The main browser window contains the items that have been published recently in the selected feed, in this case, 'Gumnuts'. If I want to go to the actual item on the Gumnuts blog, I can just click on the title of the particular item. Sage can also be configured to not display the selected feed in the main browser window unless the user clicks on a particular item title from the lower left hand panel.

Sage updates feeds on request. On the left hand side of the screenshot (just below the word "Sage") is a panel with two icons. Clicking on the leftmost icon will cause Sage to poll all of the feeds and indicate those that have been updated.

By the way, if you aren't using Firefox it's definitely worth a look.

Further Information

There are many sites that explain the use of RSS much better than this brief outline. Here are some web resources that should help you understand the methodology better.

Introducing RSS: This site explains the features and benefits of a RSS, and gives a brief technical overview of it.

What Are Webfeeds (RSS), and Why Should You Care?: A 12-part tutorial.

RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication) from the BBC: A simple introduction and help in getting started.

Ready to Give it a Try??

OK, choose and install a news reader and then return to this page and select from the options at the top.

If you have problems, let me know.

Brian Walters
ASGAP Webmaster