What is RSS?

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. Why RSS? Benefits and Reasons for using RSS RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving summaries of the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site’s email newsletter. The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing rapidly and includes big names like Yahoo News and Amazon.com. What do I need to do to read an RSS Feed? RSS Feed Readers and News Aggregators Feed Reader or News Aggregator software allow you to grab the RSS feeds from various sites and display them for you to read and use.

 

A variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk (Windows, Linux, Mac), FeedReader (Windows), and NewsGator (Windows - integrates with Outlook). Also be sure to check out Sharpreader (Windows) as well.

Sharpreader Instructions

How do I open an RSS feed in SharpReader? There are several ways to do this:

  • You can type the RSS URL into SharpReader’s address-bar and press [ENTER]
  • You can select File|Open RSS Feed, type in the RSS URL and press OK
  • For many sites, you can use the website URL itself as well and SharpReader will try to find the RSS URL for you by looking for RSS Autodiscovery tags or RSS links on the website.
  • You can use drag and drop to drag a RSS link (typically shown as XML) from your browser to SharpReader’s address-bar
  • If SharpReader is configured to “listen on port 5335″ (see Tools|Options), you can click on Radio Userland subscribe icons ( )
  • You can click on a FEED link.

How do I subscribe to an RSS feed in SharpReader?

Again, there are several ways to do this:

  • Opened the feed through one of the methods above and press the subscribe button
  • Use the “auto-subscribe” checkbox in the File|Open dialog
  • Use drag and drop to drag a RSS link from your browser to SharpReader’s subscriptions pane on the left

Where do I find new feeds to subscribe to?

You can find lists of popular feeds at