RSS Feeds Explained

You may have noticed that this newsletter and several other genealogy Web sites are now available via RSS news feeds. So are thousands of other Web news sites covering a wide variety of topics. This article will hopefully explain what RSS feeds are and what they can offer you.

RSS is an abbreviation for "rich site summary" or "really simple syndication." Most people don’t need to remember this expansion any more than they would spell out “ATM.” As to the word “feed,” this simply describes the way information gets to people: web servers “feed” their information to those who ask for it. For those who want more technical detail, RSS feeds are composed in XML, a format that is similar to HTML, the standard language in which many Web pages are created.

RSS began to appear several years ago but only recently moved into the mainstream. RSS is safe and secure; an excellent method of avoiding the flood of internet security problems and email overload. RSS has become a popular way for news publishers to provide information without sending computer users to different Web sites, cluttering their email with spam, or exposing them to adware, spyware, worms, or viruses. These factors make it equally attractive to those who read their information.

Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs publish content summaries in RSS feeds. Each item in the feed typically contains a headline; article summary, and link to the full online article. Many webmasters have discovered they can easily use RSS feeds to provide fresh web content. It works better than e-mail newsletters, providing up-to-date information at any moment in time, but never blocked by spam filters.

The benefits of RSS feeds are not limited to webmasters; those who wish to read the content benefit from the technology as well. The beauty of RSS is that readers can quickly scan headlines (titles) and then read only the articles that interest them. Because the information is condensed and provided in a single location, readers can generally review more information in much less time. Additional information is only a click away. Best of all, readers choose the feeds they wish to see. There is no spam or other unwanted material with RSS.

The reader is always in complete control. You choose the feeds you want, and if you are not completely thrilled with the content of a feed, you simply remove it from your personal list of feeds. The technology is a “pull” technology rather than “push” technology, meaning that the content is not forced on the consumers; instead, they “pull” to their screen the content they want to see. Readers use a special “RSS newsreader” program that pulls the desired articles from the Web to the user’s PC (or Mac), where they sit until the user is ready to look at them.

Using a newsreader to pull RSS feeds allows users to:

1. Easily locate information.

2. Read condensed information with clearly marked and dated topic material.

3. Classify and categorize information in an easy-to-navigate manner.

4. Maximize their time without having to deal with spam.

The newsreader constantly updates its contents and shows unread feeds. I found the newsreaders to work a lot like a simple email program. Anyone with an RSS newsreader installed simply enters the URL of any RSS feed of interest, such as http://eogn.typepad.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/index.rdf. Topics with a common theme can be grouped together. For example, someone interested in genealogy might put this newsletter and all their other genealogy RSS feeds together in one folder called “Genealogy,” just as they might do with email messages or even the files on their computer.

You can find many free RSS newsreaders for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. I use SharpReader for Windows by Luke Hutteman. I like this program because of its simplicity and reliability. You can find the free SharpReader program at http://www.sharpreader.net/. If you want to pay $29.95 for more functionality, FeedDemon by BradSoft is another popular RSS newsreader for Windows. FeedDemon is very easy to use and lets you quickly scan and index topics. FeedDemon allows users to quickly scan, sort and scroll through headline and article summaries while viewing the actual content in a split-screen web browser. A free trial version is also available, allowing you to "try it before you buy it." FeedDemon can be found at http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon. Macintosh OS X users will want to look at NetNewsWire Lite or its fee-based version, NetNewsWire, by Ranchero Software. You can find more information about these NetNewsWire newsreaders at http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/.

With any of these RSS newsreaders, you can read this newsletter by typing or pasting in the Web address of http://eogn.typepad.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/index.rdf. Your newsreader will periodically poll the newsletter to find any new articles. Whenever it finds new content, the new articles will be displayed in your RSS newsreader. All this happens in background; you can read the articles at your leisure.

To find other news feeds of interest, you might want to search Feedster. Feedster is a rapidly-growing news search engine that indexes information contained in RSS feeds. You can search for topic-specific feeds and include the ones you want in your newsreader. Look at http://about.feedster.com/index.php.

RSS has effectively standardized the format for content delivery, distribution, and syndication. RSS will likely rival email as a means of content distribution in another few years. The shear simplicity makes the technology very appealing.

The RSS news feed of this newsletter may be found at http://eogn.typepad.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/index.rdf. Here are some other genealogy-related RSS news feeds that you may be interested in:

Genealogy Blog, an excellent publication by Leland Meitzler: http://genealogyblog.com/wp-rss2.php

Family Research – English, Scottish and Irish Genealogy: http://www.lineages.co.uk/wp-rss2.php

Genealogy News by Misbach Enterprises: http://misbach.org/news.rss

About Genealogy by Kimberly Powell: http://z.about.com/6/g/genealogy/b/index.xml

Comments

[Nathan]

Your readers might like to try Sauce Reader (another RSS reader). It is free for personal use and has complete integrated help with an easy to use interface.

http://www.synop.com/Products/SauceReader/

cheers, Nathan

[Brent]

Your readers might also like to check out http://www.rssgenealogy.com which shows the latest news items from almost 100 genealogy related websites/rss feeds.

[Betty Lou]

I like this way of getting the selected news I desire. I did as you instructed and downloaded the download from microsoft first, then the Sharp Reader.
Betty Lou

[James Morgan]

I installed SharpReader but when I try to read Plus edition news items using the "Read It Now" link, for which I have a paid subscription, I get a message that the the page cannot be displayed.

[Dick Eastman]

When you click on "Read It Now," that should open your normal Web browser and ask for your user ID and password. Enter those and then the full Plus Edition article will be displayed.

If you do not have a user ID and password, send a note to support@eogn.com and they will be issued to you. Also, a TEMPORARY user ID and password is sent to you within a few hours after the normal Plus Edition newsletter every week.

Thanks.