Using NewsAloud for RSS Feeds

[kdwhite]

Our NewsAloud has a built-in RSS Reader. For those who aren't familiar, there is more info on RSS Feeds at
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

The basics are they are URLs that point to formatted data that is frequently updated with new stories or posts.

There are thousands and thousands of sites now offering content via RSS Feeds. A good example of this is
http://news.yahoo.com/rss

When you look at this page, you'll see many topics listed, such as Top Stories. To the right of it, is the XML image. This image may say XML, or RSS, but it is a link to the URL you need to get the info. For Yahoo Top Stories for example, this URL is
http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/topstories

Visiting that URL just gives you back a bunch of text that is tough to read. But to RSS Readers like NewsAloud, that data is up-to-date info about news stories available. To add an RSS Feed to NewsAloud, get the URL copied to the clipboard. The easiest way to do this is to right-click the XML image, and choose Copy Link Location.

Then in NewsAloud, from the main menu choose Options->RSS Feeds. Click the Add Button, paste in the URL from the windows clipboard by hitting Control-V. Then click OK. NewsAloud will let you name the feed, then from now on when NewsAloud updates the latest stories, it will also grab headlines from any RSS Feeds you've added.

There are dozens of places to search for sites supporting RSS. A couple of directories are
http://www.syndic8.com/
http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-directory.htm

One important thing to note is that RSS Feeds (and their cousins called ATOM) vary in how much content they include in the feed. This means that for some sites, NewsAloud may only retrieve a headline, a headline plus a description of the story, or the entire story. This depends very much on how the site builds their RSS Feed and how much content they want included.

One good example of an RSS Feed you can use within NewsAloud is our own What's New at NextUp Feed at
http://www.nextup.com/nextup.xml

Please give NewsAloud with RSS support a try and let us know what you think.