What
are Newsfeeds? Newsfeeds are also called web feeds or RSS feeds. Ther is
some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but most people opt
for 'Really Simple Syndication'. RSS feeds are just a special
kind of web page, designed to be read by computers rather than
people, a tool which allows parts of a web site to be made available
to other websites or individual subscribers. This means that content
of the ‘source site’ appears on your own website or in your "news
reader" or "aggregator" (a software that allows
you to pick up RSS content). When the content on the source site
is updated, it is also automatically updated on your website or
in your news reader. Newsfeeds are therefore usually offered by
sites that change or add content regularly such as news sites,
news-like sites or weblogs. In fact, newsfeeds are so-called RSS
files, which is a text-based format and a type of XML. Therefore
they are often labeled as XML, and are marked by a bright orange
button. Not all websites currently provide RSS, but it is growing
rapidly in popularity.
In general, the first thing you need is a news reader. This is
a piece of software that checks RSS feeds and lets you read any
new articles that have been added to them. There are many different
versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some
of which are downloadable applications. Browser-based news readers
let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer,
whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main
computer.
Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide
what content you want to receive in your news reader, by finding
and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds. For example, if you
would like the latest Spanda News Programmes events, simply visit
our Programmes page and you will
notice an orange RSS button on the up-left hand side. If you would
like the latest Spanda Jubilo news, visit the Jubilo
page and you will find the RSS button. If you would like to subscribe
to our e-Newsletter, visit the Newsletter
page where you will find – with detailed simple information –
the option to subscribe to our e-newsletter, or to the Spanda
NewsFeed, without giving any email address, nor facing any future
opt-out or spam issues etc.
You can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging
the URL of the RSS feed into your news reader or by cutting and
pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader. Most
sites that offer RSS feeds use a similar orange RSS button, but
some may just have a normal web link to the feed.
Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari, automatically
check for RSS feeds for you when you visit a website, and display
an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to RSS feeds
much easier. For more details on these, please check their websites.
There
is a range of different news readers available and new versions
are appearing all the time. Different news readers work on different
operating systems, so you will need to choose one that will work
with your computer.
If you run your own website, you can use RSS feeds to display
the latest headlines from other websites on your site, as below.
We encourage the use of Spanda NewsFweeds as part of
a website, provided that the proper format and attribution is
used when Spanda NewsFeeds content appears. The attribution
text should read "Spanda NewsFeeds" or "Spanda
Feeds" as appropriate. You may not use any Spanda logo or
other Spanda trademark. We reserve the right to prevent the distribution
of Spanda NewsFweeds content. The Spanda Foundation does not accept
any liability for its RSS feeds.
Many of our pages are available to other web sites or individual
subscribers. As an individual user, once you have installed
the news reader, you just drop the RRS orange feed icon of the
page the you are interested in your "reader" – or copy-and-paste
into the "reader" the URL spelled out after the icon – and when
the content of that page is updated, it is also automatically
updated in your news eggregator, or in your web site. You can
use the feed icon also as a bookmark, without having to overweight
your browser. We offer the following content: each orange icon
listed below links to an RSS news feed.
