Subscribing Via RSS Feeds
Available Feeds:
Subscribe to Posts via RDF/RSS 1.0
Subscribe to Posts via RSS 0.92
Subscribe to Posts via RSS 2.0
Subscribe to Posts via Atom
Subscribe to Comments (sorry, only RSS 2.0 is available for comments)
More Information About 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. Sounds easy, right? well I can tell you after the past couple of days of experimenting, it is not! There are just too many choices out there, all offering slightly different services. I will try to break down a couple of options though that I think are worth trying out.
- View all of your subscriptions directly in your web browser.
This is the most straight forward of all the methods listed here. While there are a lot of ways to accomplish this in most modern browsers, perhaps the easiest (and slickest) is with the FireFox browser. FireFox can auto detect most feeds, and provide a shortcut for subscribing. whenever FireFox auto-detects a feed you will see this symbol:
in the address bar of the page or in the bottom right-hand corner of the page (depending on the version of FireFox you are using).
You can add the feed(s) by clicking the orange icon and subscribing to one. If there is more then one RSS feed, Firefox shows a list from which you can pick one.
To get a choice of where to add the Live Bookmark; most like to add it to the Bookmarks Tool bar Folder, normally shown under the navigation tool bar. This allows you to have a quick peek at recent events with just one mouse click.
If you know a site has an RSS feed, but the orange icon doesn’t show up, you can add the feed manually. Select “New Live Bookmark…” in the Bookmarks Manager and enter the URL and other information of the feed.
- Using a local application to aggregate feeds.
This is the most robust way to view rss feeds from a variety of online sources, not just auSoA. First, you have to choose an rss reader application, and there are almost too many from which to choose! Some are free, while others require a small fee to purchase. each one offers a little different palette of options and services, so it is best to try several out. here is a list of some of the most popular News Readers, but feel free to Google around find others.Please leave comments here if you have questions or comments about these or any other readers.
Free RSS Aggregators For the PC:
Mozilla Thunderbird
Omea Reader
Awasu Personal Reader
SharpReader
RSS Bandit
Paid RSS Aggregators for the PC:
Newsgator Business & Outlook Edition
Newzcrawler
FeedDemon
RSS Aggregators for the Mac:
Mozilla Thunderbird
Shrook
Pulp Fiction
NetNewsWire (click on the “lite” tab for a free version)
NewsFire
PixelNews
