A beginner’s guide to Really Simple Syndication or RSS.

Today’s article is the first in a series of short but informative articles on how to use a tool to collect information from different websites and bring them to your desktop for easy review and access.

So let’s begin this series with a simple question: what exactly is an RSS feeds and what does RSS mean? Put simply, RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. These feeds can be subscribed to and added to a software client running on your desktop. The client is known as an aggregator and this functionality exists in Microsoft Outlook, Apple’s Mail application, and on Linux with an application called Liferea. A simple Google search will give you a lengthy list of RSS applications far beyond the few that I have just mentioned, but these are the few that I am familiar with.

What about a “cloud” or Internet based solution? Well Google has a product which works really well that is known as Google Reader.

OK, so you have told me about several desktop applications and one web based application but why would I want to use this RSS stuff for anyway? Let’s say that you are starting to use the Internet more and more everyday as your main source for news about financial information and entertainment. You open your web browser and start pulling up sites to find the information that you want to view. This is all fine because that is what your computer and web browser were made for.

But what if you could bring all of the headlines and stories straight to your desktop or a web application and see them all in one spot?

OK, that sounds great.  So I am using Windows and I have opened Outlook 2007, and in Outlook 2007 I see something for RSS but the links there appear to be only about Microsoft and Microsoft products! Yes you are right.  As by default, Microsoft Outlook has feeds pertaining to Microsoft products.  Just as if you are a Mac user you will see that Apple Mail opens with one RSS feed and it is relative to Apple products.

Today we will look at Microsoft Outlook 2007 and in future articles we will review Apple Mail and Google Reader.

Let’s review a few places to get feeds and then add a few feeds to Outlook 2007.  Here is a look at my top ten list of news feeds that we can easily subscribe. Simply click on a link to view the feeds.

1. NPR Feed list – Contains everything from Arts and Culture to World News.
2. Yahoo Feed list – This is another site that covers a lot pf topics but also has a unique feature in that you can create custom RSS feeds with very little effort.
3. Google’s page on RSS – Google has a page with information on RSS feeds, click the link to Available feeds.
4. CNN’s Feed list – This is a link to CNN’s website feeds, and the Money feed is one that I personally subscribe.
5. RSS Weather Feeds – Go on and setup your local weather!
6. Ebay Feeds for sale items –  Would you like to monitor Ebay for a hard to find item?
7. Slashdot RSS Feeds –  Nothing like slashdot to keep us techies satisfied!
8. Funny feeds here –  Because everything in our feed reader does not have to be serious.
9. Financial Feeds – Well not one feed but 100 Best RSS Feeds for Your Financial Literacy.
10. RSS Feeds from The Onion web site –  Sarcasm

Have you found something you want to add to your Outlook RSS reader? Great! For this example I am going to use NPR, but they all basically work the same. So open your web browser and go to http://www.npr.org/rss and then open Outlook and we will add the feed.

I have opened the NPR page and clicked on the RSS feed link for Morning Edition.
Screen shot from NPR web page.
Depending on the browser used we now have opened either a new window or tab with the URL we need to copy.
Example RSS url shown in browser.
Copy this link and go back to Outlook and find the RSS Feeds folder. Right click on RSS and choose add feed.
Add a new RSS feed to Outlook 07
Now the New RSS Feed dialog box opens. Paste the URL from the last step into the box and click Add.
Outlook 2007 Add RSS feed dialog.
And, of course instead of being added to Outlook we are next prompted to make absolutely sure that we want to add this feed! There are some other options that we may or may not want to review under the advanced button, but they are not required.
Outlooks confirmation dialog to add a RSS feed.
You can click the Advanced button and change the feed name and a few other options, but normally I just choose yes and, depending on your network connection speed, the RSS feed will populate with the latest stories from NPR’ Morning Edition.
Depending on how you have Outlook setup, you can see the feeds, the title and a brief summary of the story. Links are included to forward this on to friends, add to Del.icio.us or view the whole article. How is that for setting up the news that you want all in one easy access location!
Screen shot of outlook showing RSS feed and stories.

Besides news, finance, and jokes what else is RSS good for? Well MLD Services new online backup service will offer a weekly email recap or an RSS feed of your backups that provide you with all the important information on systems that are being backed up over the Internet. Contact us for more information.

Next article in RSS series focuses on Google Reader.

Next article in RSS series focusing on Apple Mail.

Matthew L. Davidson: MLD Services: Lexington KY