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RSS feeds
Sat, 2007-02-03 16:03 — Admin1
What is RSS?
RSS is a way of collecting information from various websites and depositing it in a central location, like creating your own daily newspaper that contains only articles from sources you have subscribed to.
Many websites send out “RSS feeds”, and if you subscribe to an RSS feed for a particular page, the website will send you new content that is published on that part of their website without you having to visit the website to get the new information. RSS feeds are received by the interested party using an RSS reader.
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary”. One meaning of the word “syndicate” is “to publish simultaneously, or supply for simultaneous publication”. This is the meaning that is intended when websites say that you can “syndicate” their content.
How to syndicate content
Syndicated content can be collected in a number of places:
o Modern versions of browsers such a Mozilla Firefox and Internet explorer have RSS readers built into them.
o Modern versions of Microsoft Outlook have a RSS reader built in.
o If you have a Google account you can use Google Reader: www.reader.google.com.
o You can sign up for a free account at an aggregator website like www.newsgator.com.
o You can download and install aggregator software on your computer: www.feedreader.com.
Why would you bother using RSS?
Using RSS feeds saves you the effort of visiting your favourite sites each day. Instead, all new content from the pages you subscribe to is delivered to one central location.
Other advantages of RSS are that you do not have to give out your email address (like you do for mailing lists), and that you can unsubscribe by simply deleting the feed from your aggregator.
Subscribing to syndicated content on Legaltree.
All Legaltree pages that have the orange syndication symbol on their bottom left corner can be syndicated. In particular, you can subscribe to the news columns, including the Supreme Court of Canada case summaries via RSS.
Find out more
An excellent video on RSS (3 min. 45 sec.): http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english
Wikipedia article that explains RSS in more detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29
