Posts for Topic: RSS
A Great all around Feed Reader: My Yahoo!
April 24th, 2009 by marshall
There are many Feed Readers out there for both Macs and PCs. Some are desktop programs and others are web-based. I prefer the latter because once you set up your customized page it’s always just the way you like on any computer you use.
Let’s focus on my personal favorite web-based RSS reader, My Yahoo!. It is easy to use, highly customizable, styled in the theme of your choice, more visual than most with the inclusion of images, and available on any computer you use (as well as your iPhone through the free Yahoo! App [iTunes Link]).
Use the "+Add Content" button, circled in red above, to add feeds to your page.
If you don’t already have one, you can create a yahoo account for free. After setting up your Yahoo! Id and logging into yahoo, click the My Yahoo! link in the header. You can now customize your page by adding content (click the “+ Add Content” button shown right) from their vast stores of Feeds and Applications (commonly referred to as “Widgets”). You can also add feeds from the sites that you enjoy most by doing the following:
- On the site you want to add, Click the
RSS logo and copy the feed url to the content you want. - Then back in My Yahoo! click “+ Add Content” (shown in the above image)
- Then, click “Add RSS Feed” (shown highlighted in red below)
- Then paste the link in to the text field to add it.
Add Content Panel Open.
My Yahoo! Feed Options Dialog Screen Sample
After you have all the content you want on your page you can grab the top bar of any area and drag it to a new location arranging your feeds to your liking.
The 
(gear) icon will open the preferences dialog. This lets you change the number for articles, dates displayed, as well as the option to include images or just the headline text only. This is an option many other feed readers do not offer.
That’s the basics of customizing My Yahoo!, for more information please refer to Yahoo! Help for My Yahoo!.
What is RSS and why would I care?
April 8th, 2009 by marshall
Q. What is RSS?
A. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, essentially it’s a way to “publish” news, articles, personal opinions, stories, blog entries, and more (e.g. content) on the web. This stream or information from your site is a Feed. Other people can subscribe to your RSS Feed and be instantly updated when you write something new, without having to remember to visit your website.
To use an example: You like gardening and while surfing the web you find a great website dedicated to gardening tips. There are a bunch of great tips and you can see that they are updated regularly, instead of having to remember to come back and see what’s new on a regular basis you can subscribe to their RSS feed. Every blog or news site has one, and so do many other site. Just look for the 
logo.
Q. How do I subscribe to an RSS Feed?
A. All modern web browsers (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc.) can handle RSS Feeds. When you click the RSS logo link you will be redirected to that website’s RSS Feed. This URL (web address) is the RSS Feed you can copy it into whatever Feed Reader (see below) to you use.
Q. What’s an RSS feed reader?
A. A program designed to capture updates to “subscribed” RSS feeds. There are lots of RSS readers, some are programs installed on your computer others are web-based customizable sites (like My Yahoo! or iGoogle) that allow you to add Feeds from their library or add your own.
