RSS News Feeds on INFO San MiguelWhat's RSS ?RSS is the acronym for 'Really Simple Syndication'INFO San Miguel has used Email as a means of delivering our weekly Newsletter to you. But due to an increasing problem with SPAM filters that remove legitimate email such as our newsletter, Email is no longer the delivery system of choice. RSS is an alternate and relatively new system of delivering news to you directly. Many major news media websites use RSS to deliver the headlines to their viewers with links to the full news story on a webpage of their website. Now INFO San Miguel is using RSS too. The Three Ways You Get Information using the InternetEmail is known to everyone and has been the most common way for you to receive information. It is an example of 'Push' technology... the information is pushed out to you to your email address. The disadvantage is that a lot of unwanted information (SPAM) is pushed out to you as well making it more and more difficult to find the information that you really want in your personal and business email. Search is also known to most everyone using the Internet. The search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and many others display many pages of 'results' for Keywords that you enter for the topic of information you wish to learn about. But because of the billions of web pages that are now in the search engine databases, it is increasing difficult to find information especially on web pages that do not appear on the first few pages of search results. You can spend a lot of time searching as you know. This method of getting information is called 'search and display'. RSS offers the third, the newest, and probably the most efficient way of getting information. Basically it is a 'pull' method of getting information. You select and 'pull' the information from the news sources or websites that provide the kind of information you use and want. Because you select the news source, you only get what you want... not all the SPAM information of the Email system. And you save time by not having to 'search' through countless pages of information that may by related, but not what you want, when using search engines. With RSS, all your information 'feeds' are located in one convenient place and, best of all, are automatically updated when new information becomes available. You can read the updates at your leisure when you want... customized information and automatically updated. Sounds good! The Disadvantage of RSSThe single disadvantage of using RSS is when you first begin... you must select the 'location' to receive your RSS news feeds and then enter the news feed 'address' in the program. There are currently several options available to you for the 'location'... 1. a specialized program that you install on your computer called a 'news aggregator' or 'news reader' - eg. FeedReader 2. a news reader program that is on a website on the Internet. You simply sign up for an account and then use the system that is available from a webpage on the Internet - eg. My Yahoo, NewsGator 3. an Internet browser with RSS features included - Firefox (RSS is coming in the next version of Microsoft Explorer) 4. an Email program with RSS features included - Thunderbird Setting Up Your News Feed is EasyWhen browsing different web sites you probably have noticed one of the following icons or something similar:
The icons are different ways of showing you that the web site offers an RSS feed for you to receive updates of its news, and that you an access the news by using the web link 'behind' the icon. If you clicked on the icon on a page of INFO SMA, you would only see a lot of XML code that wouldn't make any sense to you, but this is the code that forms the RSS feed and is used by the RSS news feed reader program to present the news to you in a 'friendly' manner. To 'subscribe' to this news feed and use it, you enter this web page address from your browser's web page address bar into your RSS news feed program. Since most programs use a similar setup process, we will describe a couple for setting up your RSS news feed for INFO SMA's News, and you should be able to adapt this info to your situation. My Yahoo Complete instructions for setting up your 'My Yahoo' account are on the Yahoo site. If you do not have a 'My Yahoo' account, you will need to set up your account first. On your 'My Yahoo' page you will see a link near the top left or at the bottom of the page - 'Add Content'. Click on the 'Add Content' link. Now click on the 'Add RSS by URL' link to the right in the 'Find Content' box. Copy and paste the following web page address into the URL box... http://www.infosma.com/blog/news/atom.xml Now click on 'Add'. On the next page, click on the 'Add to My Yahoo' button. Your new link to INFO SMA's News will usually appear at the bottom of your left column of news and links on your My Yahoo page. Simply click on the link to see the News. The link will be updated automatically when the News is added to the New and Exciting page of INFO SMA. Thunderbird Email - Open your Thunderbird email program - Click on 'Tools - Account Settings' - Click on 'Add Account' - Select 'RSS News & Blog' - click on 'Next' - In the Account name box, type in 'INFO SMA - News' - click on 'Next' - click on 'Finish' - Click on 'INFO SMA - News' in the left Account list - On the right panel 'RSS Account Settings' click in the box to the left of 'Check for new Articles at Start Up' to place a checkmark - Click on 'Manage Subscriptions' - Click on 'Add' - Type in the 'Feed URL' box - ' http://www.infosma.com/blog/news/atom.xml ' - Click on 'OK' - click on 'OK' - click on 'OK' That's it! Now close Thunderbird and re-open it so that your new RSS News Feed becomes activated. You should now see a new News Feed Icon ' INFO SMA - News ' above your 'Local Folders' icon on the window that displays your Email account folders. Click on the '+' icon to open the folder to display 2 folders - Trash, and INFO SMA - News. Click on the 'INFO SMA - News' folder and you will see the 'News' news feed articles in the right pane. Click on the Article link to display the News. Firefox web browser - Open your Firefox web browser program - Click on 'Bookmarks' - 'Manage Bookmarks' - 'File' - 'New Live Bookmark' - In the 'Name' box type in - ' INFO SMA - News ' - In the 'Feed Location' box type in - ' http://www.infosma.com/blog/news/atom.xml ' - In the 'Description' box type in - ' INFO SMA - News weekly news ' - Click on 'OK' You will see a new folder 'INFO SMA - News' at the top of your Bookmark List - Select/Highlight the 'INFO SMA - News' folder - Click on the 'Move' button on the menu bar - On the 'Choose Folder' window, select the 'Bookmarks Toolbar Folder' - click on 'OK' - Close the 'Bookmarks Manager' window by clicking on the X in the top right corner of the window - On the main menu of Firefox, click on 'View - Toolbars' and click on the 'Bookmarks Toolbar' option to select it (place a checkmark beside it). Now your new 'INFO SMA - News' news feed icon will appear on your Bookmarks Toolbar. Click on the icon to see the dropdown menu of News files that have been loaded. Click on the 'News' file name to display the News. The Advantages of RSS- since the RSS news feed does not use Email, there is no need to disclose your email address, and have the possibility of receiving even more SPAM - no complicated subscribing or un-subscribing process - the news message is not mixed with all your other business and personal email...this makes it easy to use - it's FREE! - the news format can include pictures, images and more... just like a webpage - RSS news updates are immediately available to you for viewing when it's convenient - once you have chosen the 'program' for reading your RSS news feeds, you can use that same program to set up all your favorite news feeds and blogs from all over the Internet... greatly simplifying your Internet experience. Summary Steps...1. Select and set up your 'news reader' program 2. Click on the 'RSS' or 'XML' or 'ATOM' image on a webpage of INFO San Miguel or other website to go to the special news web page... copy the web page address, and then paste it into your news reader program's 'Add News Feed' page. That's it! Welcome to the fastest, easiest way of receiving news on the Internet! |
