Setting up an RSS feed – in minutes

By Srini Penchikala
August 2007

We are hearing a lot about blogs and RSS feeds these days. This article will describe RSS, an easy way to be alerted to new content on multiple blogs and websites. I will also explain how you can set up RSS for the HumaniNet Team Blog.

When you are done, you will have an RSS reader page much like the one in Figure 1 below. It will take you about 5-10 minutes to set this up.

RSS, which is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, means that when one of your favorite blogs or websites publishes new content on their website, you can automatically get those updates in to a web application of your choice. This way you don't need to check your favorite website, whether it's HumaniNet, CNN, Expedia, or other RSS-enabled website several times every day. 

For a more complete explanation, you may want to check out a very good article, What is RSS?

RSS feeds are a representation of the blog that can be picked up and displayed using web based news aggregation tools. Basically, we subscribe to these blog website feeds to start receiving the notifications on new content posted on these websites. These feeds come in different formats such as Atom, RSS, OPML etc. No matter which format we want to use, we need a program called "News Aggregator" to get the RSS feeds from different web sites that web subscribe to.

News Aggregators, also known as RSS Readers, are special type of software that automatically let you know when the websites are updated. RSS readers can be web based (meaning you can use the web browser to use these readers) or desktop based (where you need to download and install the software on your PC). There are several RSS readers out there, but some of the popular ones are Bloglines, MyYahoo, Google Reader (all web based) and SharpReader (desktop). Check out this link if you want to know more about what RSS readers are available

Instructions on how to subscribe for HumaniNet RSS feeds
I use Bloglines to keep up-to-date with what's happening around the web, including the Humaninet Team Blog. Here are the steps for subscribing to RSS feeds using Bloglines. The instructions are pretty much the same for any other RSS client.

• First, go to the Bloglines website to sign up, which takes less than a minute.
  
  
• Next, login to Bloglines. Select Add on the top of the left column to add a new RSS feed.
  
  
• Then enter the following URL in the "Blog or Feed URL" text field: http://humaninet.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
  
  
• On the next screen, you can select the options to customize the feed. You can choose if you only want to see the summary of news items or full details, or if you want the Bloglines notifier to monitor the blog feed updates. You may also add your own notes to show with the blog feeds.
  
  
• You can customize how you want to receive about the blog website updates, the format, and the timeframe in which the content was posted (such as within the last 24 hours or even last week or month). This way you will never miss any of the updates if you are away on vacation.
  
  
• Click the Subscribe button at the bottom of the screen and that's it. A new entry called "HumaniNet from the Field" will show up in your list of RSS feed subscriptions.
  
  
• Click on this new entry and you can see the HumaniNet blog web content (in the right hand frame). You can also access the blog site in the web browser just by double-clicking on the Humaninet entry in the list.

The “Clippings” section provides a way to save a particular news item that you found in the RSS feeds and you want to save for future reading (kind of adding a bookmark in the web browser of a website URL). To do this, just click on "Clip/Blog This" link just below the news feed and select "Save To" button on the pop-up window. You can also publish this on your blog (with your own comments of course).

“Playlist” is another cool feature offered by Bloglines RSS reader. Using this feature, you can create a customized portal of your favorite blog websites. Playlist will display them as individual lists (as boxes) that you can expand (maximize) or collapse (minimize) to hide the entries. You can also hover the mouse onto any of these entries and view more details of the news item.

Figure 2 below shows the screenshot of the “Playlists” tab with HumaniNet and other blog feeds (BBC News, New York Time, and Reuters) set up as a playlist.

Figure 2. Bloglines Playlists screenshot with HumaniNet and other blog sites RSS feeds