RSS

Real Simple Syndication Wikipedia article

How can I view RSS feeds on the APN Public PCs?

An RSS feed (or channel) contains a summary of content from a web site filtered or summarized and displayed in RSS readers.  While Internet Explorer v7 and Firefox have RSS readers built-in your RSS subscription information is stored locally to the APN Public PC.  That means when the computer restarts your subscriptions are lost. 

So instead you could save your RSS subscriptions online.  Netvibes, Yahoo Pipes and PageFlakes are designed to do this for you.    After registering and signing into Netvibes (using Internet Explorer or Firefox) you can add an RSS feed in the following manner ...

•  sign in (if you haven't registered before do so now)
• add content
• add a feed
• now the tricky bit, say for example, you wish to add the Stuff news website RSS feed
• open a new tab or window
• go to www.stuff.co.nz
• look for the orange RSS feed icon - it currently appears on the Stuff websites homepage - and click on it
• copy the URL of the feed you wish to subscribe to, eg Top Stories http://stuff.co.nz/feeds/topstories.xml
• go back to your Netvibes page and paste the URL into the "Enter a feed address ..." box
• click on the add feed button and it will load
• click and drag the box into the main section of the page to arrange your RSS feeds in any order you like

To add your del.icio.us page to Netvibes ...

• add content
• add a feed  (eg http://del.icio.us/rss/yourusername)

And why do I want to use RSS again?

You can use RSS feeds to keep uptodate.  By logging into one website, eg Netvibes, and subscribing to various feeds you can at a glance see new information added to your favourite websites.  For example you can subscribe to Radio NZ, NZ Herald, BBC for news.  There are Weather RSS feeds (hopefully for your region!), Facebook RSS feeds to show you updates to your profile.  You can subscribe to your favourite blogs and websites RSS feeds like Digg, Wired and Geekzone.  Plus you can use gadgets or widgets to build to-do lists, on-line post it notes, etc.