| If you read most of your daily news over feed | | | | software, you can select the length of the news |
| readers or RSS aggregators, then skip this article and | | | | feed, so that you can read a summary of the news, |
| go do something else. | | | | instead of having to read the whole thing, time is |
| The reason why I am writing about RSS feeds, is | | | | money, and this is especially true these days. |
| because of how great I personally think this way of | | | | Let's say you subscribed to a news site, you fire-up |
| keeping your self on top of thing is. If you think that | | | | your aggregator, it will grab all the latest unread |
| reading newspapers is the best way to get news, | | | | feeds on that news site, after going through them, |
| think again, you have to keep in mind that | | | | the aggregator will remove them, and refresh to |
| newspapers provide readers with news that are a | | | | update your feeds with new news. |
| day or at best a couple of hours late, so it's stale | | | | No time wasted, and you got what you wanted |
| news by the time you read it. | | | | thanks to XML technology, what can be better then |
| In the US, some magazine publications have shrank | | | | that, well aggregators come in different types and |
| there copy sizes dramatically, removing the news | | | | forms, there are the free ones all over the net and |
| sections, simply because their readers know about | | | | of course there is the paid subscriptions, but to round |
| the news before the publication hits the news stands. | | | | them up, aggregators fall under four major types. |
| Now most publications provide their own take and | | | | Online aggregators: |
| opinions on those news articles instead of running the | | | | Thanks to the advancement of what is known as |
| headlines, simply because it's a waste of ink, paper, | | | | Web 2.0, you get online software like Gmail, Flickr, |
| and time. | | | | Digg, the new Yahoo home-page, or even an online |
| I have been using feed aggregators for years now, | | | | aggregator, most of these aggregators are free to |
| and people tend to get a shock to see how updated | | | | subscribe to, they work efficiently, my personal |
| I am when it comes to the latest news, I would | | | | favorites are Bloglines, and Newsgator. |
| surprise anyone when I start talking about the latest | | | | Aggregator Notifiers: |
| tech news, a day or two later they call me up telling | | | | These are small simple softwares that you download |
| me, "you're right, I have just read this in the | | | | to your machine, they will notify you with a popup |
| newspaper". | | | | with whatever news hits your subscription, you can |
| You see man-kind is advancing in numerous ways, | | | | download them after joining an online aggregator and |
| ways we never even dreamt of, take blogs and the | | | | they will sync with the aggregator's server, to check |
| way they have evolved, or listening to podcasts, and | | | | on new feeds. |
| how much fun and informative they became. But I | | | | Browser built-in aggregators: |
| will address both on a later article, now let's focus on | | | | You can find these in free browsers like Apple's |
| RSS. | | | | Safari 2.0, which comes with Mac OS X Tiger, you |
| RSS means Real Simple Syndicate, well that's one | | | | can also find it on Firefox, on all major OS platforms, |
| definition, it has a lot of meanings but simply it's | | | | and also you can find it on the upcoming Internet |
| information that come to you upon subscription, but | | | | Explorer 7.0 (you can download the IE 7 Beta 3 for |
| what makes RSS unique? And how is it different | | | | now). |
| from Ezines or emailed newsletters? | | | | Aggregator Software: |
| Ezines and newsletters are both delivered to your | | | | These are designated software where its only job is |
| email account, and to be honest we tend to ignore | | | | to grab news feeds for you, there are a lot of |
| them at times, because they are too long to read, | | | | those, but the best would be NetNewsWire for the |
| we would waste hours going through heaps of | | | | Mac platform, and FeedDemon on Windows, but to |
| information, so we tend to pile them up in our inbox, | | | | use anyone of these you have to pay an annual |
| till we get fed up with there inbox-presence and | | | | subscription. |
| decide to read them over the weekend, now this is | | | | What you should do next: |
| old fashion, no one does that any more, or at least | | | | Now you should go to one of the available |
| shouldn't do that any more, you see technology has | | | | aggregators, and subscribe to one of them, after |
| advanced a great deal, and now getting informed is | | | | doing this step you should pick the news feeds you |
| easier, and much more fun. | | | | want to subscribe to and choose them, that's it. |
| Enter RSS or news feeds, the major difference is | | | | Simple, easy, and sufficient. |
| the fact that instead of reading news off your email | | | | I recommend that you try a free online subscription |
| inbox, or typing a URL and going to a news website, | | | | to see how useful this technology is before paying |
| you get the news to your aggregator of feed | | | | an annual subscription and downloading an RSS |
| catcher software, once you subscribe to a feed the | | | | reader. |
| site will send the latest news to your aggregator | | | | Stay informed 24/7 and Enjoy! |