auSoA is composed of two types of content: static and dynamic. Static content is the stuff that does not change much: things like the faculty list page, descriptions of the academic programs, and the history of the school. In the lingo of the site, these are called pages and are constructed by-and-large by using good-old html mark-up. Dynamic content on the other hand is represented by all of the stuff that gets updated constantly without too much intervention. Things like Bruce’s posts on the front page, the calender, and the running list of news items are all good examples of dynamic content. These items (again in the language of the site) are called posts. Posts, while they do require someone to write them, are fundamentally different from pages in that they are to some degree self organizing. In other words, when someone adds a news item, or Bruce writes an observation, all they do is flag their post with any number of categories and the website reorganizes itself with the newest content displayed and older content rolling off into the archives.

What this means is that because there is lots of new content generated on a regular basis, it is easy to miss something as it rolls into the archives. Rather than spend all of your time surfing from page-to-page lest you miss something important, you may choose to subscribe to the different dynamic parts of the site as you see fit. As one of the admins of the site, I have subscribed to the whole kit and caboodle, but you may only be interested in “lectures” for example, or Bruce’s daily posts.

Subscribing to the various parts of the site is pretty easy, once you get the concept of what is going on. Subscriptions to auSoA use RSS feeds. The idea behind RSS (Real Simple Syndication) Feeds is very clever: instead of all of the changes to a site being pushed out to you, you (or rather your automated agent) can instead go to the site and get only what you want. Better yet, you can go to multiple sites and get only the pieces and parts that you want from each and reassemble the content into a personalized stream of information. This is called aggregating, and to do it all you need is a site with robust rss feeds and a good news aggregator. The auSoA Website has provided you with the RSS feeds, now all you need is to find and install a good aggregator.

Subscribe by RSS (new-fangled, hip and hi-tech)
Using a good aggregator will allow all of your news from a variety of sources to wind up in one place. I personally use an inexpensive service that adds this functionality to Microsoft Outlook, which I use as my email reader. This allows me to organize and file away all of my emails and news feeds in the same format. But don’t worry - there are lots of great (and free!) aggregators out there. Simply follow the link above to learn more about them.