Scrapbook of a Lifetime

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What Is RSS?

Here's a short Introduction to Really Simple Syndication or RSS

RSS offers you a way of receiving information or content to from Preferred Memberships and News Providers without using email. There are several advantages of using RSS to receive your content instead of email:

You subscribe to an RSS feed because you want to receive valuable information. If that information is not exactly what you want, all you need to do is remove the link to the feed (server or computer on the internet that provides the information) and instantly... no more messages. As a subscriber, you are fully in control of this system; not your service provider or the feed creator. You have to subscribe (place the coded link into your reader) for any content to be seen.

Because RSS does not use email, there are no SPAM problems and no filters to prevent you from receiving the information you are asking for. Again, because you are in total control, your content is guaranteed to be delivered without being filtered out by over-zealous (better too much than too little) SPAM filters, and your information can be full of rich content, active links and graphics without worry of not working or being filtered.

For RSS to work, it requires that an RSS News Reader - a special program that’s installed on your PC or Mac.

How To View RSS Feeds:

To view an RSS feed, you will need to install the News Reader software, also called a News Aggregator on to your system prior to subscribing to any news feeds. There are many different versions, some of which are installed on your PC/Mac as a stand-alone program and some of which you access by using your normal web browser. Either way, these applications allow you to subscribe to and display the RSS feeds that you want by regularly polling the host (Internet Computer where the content is kept) of the RSS feed for the latest content information.

A Couple of Small Differences:

Unlike email, an RSS message does not simply appear in the inbox of your News Reader software. When a new message item is placed on the host system, the subscriber's News Reader must access the internet and poll (ask for) the new information in order for it to be delivered. Remember, you are in control of what you get and what you don't.

Once that happens (automatically if your News Reader is up and running and you have internet access) you, the subscriber are shown the title of the new item, and its brief description within the News Reader program.

You can then choose to view the content of the item by clicking on its title or message link or choose to delete it without viewing it.

Note - you will only see the actual content of the message if you choose to do so by clicking on the item title (link) in your news reader program.
 

Ready to give it a try?

Here are some of the more common FREE RSS news readers we found. We have only tried a couple, and can only tell you that SharpReader is the one Kathy and I use on our Windows Machines. You may want to try out or at least view the instructions and screenshots of two or three and then try them out on your machine before selecting yours. It's the way of the future and many of the major companies, Microsoft included are adding them to there suite of software applications and tools. So, new ones are coming out all the time.

That said, here's the list: [all open in new windows]

Windows:
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SharpReader http://www.sharpreader.net
Newz Crawler www.newzcrawler.com
Feed Demon www.feeddemon.com
Awasu www.awasu.com


Mac OS X
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Newsfire www.newsfirerss.com
NetNewsWire www.ranchero.com/netnewswire
 

Browser Based

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Bloglines www.bloglines.com
My Yahoo! http://my.yahoo.com
NewsGator www.newsgator.com

Another List of FREE News Readers
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http://blogspace.com/rss/readers

When you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is decide what content you want to subscribe to. Many sites (including PrincessCrafts.com) and BLOGs offer content supplied by RSS feed, shown by a small orange RSS or XML image  or text link like this:

"Subscribe to this sites feed"

Just "Right Click on any of these images and "Copy Shortcut", then go into your reader and paste the link to your subscribe option when asked.  It's that easy.