RSS News Feeds
What is RSS and how is it beneficial to me?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a Web content syndication format often referred to as “News Feeds”. News feeds allow you to quickly and easily see when websites have added new content. You can get the latest news articles, journal posts, product listings, photographs, and audio and video podcasts in one place, as soon as its published, without having to sign-up for mailing lists or visit the websites you have taken the feed from. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo.
How do I start using feeds?
The first thing you need is something called a News Aggregator also commonly known as a “Feed Reader”. This is a piece of software that checks the feeds and lets you read any new content that has been added. Some news readers such as Bloglines, FeedZilla, and Google Reader are accessed using a browser, while others such as Awasu, FeedDemon, and NewzCrawler for the PC and NewsFire and NetNewsWire for MAC are downloadable applications.
Once you have your Feed Reader, it is a matter of finding sites that syndicate content then adding their RSS feed to the list of feeds your Feed Reader checks. Many sites display a small, orange icon or the acronyms RSS, XML, or RDF to let you know a feed is available. If you click on the icon you can subscribe to the feed in various ways–many feed readers will retrieve the feed automatically. Check your feed reader’s documentation for step by step instructions on how to add a new feed.
The IQMax News Feed
To subscribe to the IQMax news feed, register this link with your news reader.