Using RSS - an alternative to search & browse


The amount of news and information available on the World Wide Web exceeds our ability to comprehend it. What is more, once we find a good web resource, we still have to contend with its non-standard navigation scheme - every site is different - as well as the distractions from irrelevant links and advertisements.

The problem we have today is not access to information, but the how best to get at the right information from the millions of web sites that are just one click away.

There's a new type of service designed for people who don't always have the time or inclination to browse from site to site for updates - that is , the vast majority of us. The service is a simple fetch technology, named RSS ("Really Simple Syndication"), a free service that delivers user-defined information to the door.

Maybe you want to keep up on new stories about medical technology, major league baseball scores and updates on your stocks. With RSS, you no longer have to traipse from site to site and pick up things along the way. S brings summaries of stories or forum postings to you. The stories are saved and neatly listed either in your mail tool, or on a separate application, without the distractions of advertising or unfamiliar navigation schemes.

How it works
Many sites provide RSS “feeds.” These feeds list the content as it's added to a site. Aboutglasstile has one feed for main page and article content and also a feed to track new forum postings. If you want to subscribe to a feed- that is, keep updated on new content that it tracks - simply add the feed's URL to your “news reader” ( also known as a news aggregator). The reader will do the rest. RSS news can be accessed from:

- Mail tools, such as Thunderbird or Outlook
- Lightweight desktop applications like Feedreader, or
- Browser-based spaces like Bloglines

All three types of reader are available for free. Once set up, they will automatically compile a list of stories from the sites you want to track, and identify the new stories. All three types of RSS readers can also be set up to notify you when a new forum posting or story comes in.

And the best news of all: virtually anyone - even the most technically challenged person - can use these news readers.

Getting connected
There is no cost to connection. Mozilla's Thunderbird mail reader, a free alternative to Microsoft Outlook, has a built in RSS reader. So do several browsers. There are also free desktop readers, as well as Bloglines, a web-based personal space where you can read headlines from your selected news sources.

Aboutglasstile's RSS feed: http://www.aboutglasstile.com/feed.xml