Graphic created using an image submitted to Western's Photoblog. Photo by Marcin Mokrzewski.

Subscribing to
RSS feeds

In addition to the feeds listed on the right, most weblogs have RSS technology embedded as well. Visit our directory and choose a weblog - the web page for that blog should show an orange button with "RSS" or "XML" if a feed is available. Copy the link location to your news reader to start having the feed delivered to your desktop.

Visit our RSS Directory for a list of Western RSS feeds.

RSS Feeds

If you follow a weblog or a web page that is updated frequently (such as a news site), there's a pretty good chance that you can get the content from that site "delivered" to your desktop as soon as there's something new to see - without having to go to the Web site.

This is done with an RSS feed - essentially an extra bit of information that goes along with the web site, that describes new items and makes them available to any program that comes to read them.

An RSS reading program - possibly an email application, web browser or stand-alone application - automatically checks the RSS feeds you "subscribe" to on a regular interval and fetches those new items for you to read. Subscribing is done by simply pasting the web address of the RSS feed into your RSS reading program (popularly referred to as a "news reader" or "aggregator"). Whenever new items are available on any of your subscriptions, they will automatically appear here. Some services will also include a notifier, which may activate in your system tray to tell you when there is something new to see.

For more information, see the BBC primer on their RSS Web page, or visit our Resources section.

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