basic rss feed question?

Question

in a nutshell what does rss do?

does it notify my when a new feed comes in or do i have to check to see if there are any new feeds?

what is a rss reader for mac
and what is a rss reader for windows

i need something free and easy

thanks

i do not want a web based one

can i download something that would check the feeds i subscribe to???

reason being odds of me being loged in to a website are unlikly

Answer 1

RSS feeds are news feeds that you subscribe to. Its like a webpage but without all the ads. The RSS viewer will update the feed periodically(every 5 mins to every hour). It will not notify you when a new article has been added to the feed however if you remember how many articles were there the last time you read them you can compaire the two.
Internet explorer has a RSS viewer built into it. (The orange RSS icon below the url/search textbox.) If you have Vista you can add a RSS viewer to your desktop via the sidebar. not sure about macs.

Check out http://www.rssmicro.com/ to find feeds

Answer 2

RSS is a standard format for syndicating content on the Internet. The content can be anything! Often information contained in an RSS feed is syndicated on other sites which expands its reach.

Website visitors love RSS because they choose which feeds they wish to subscribe to, if at any point they are unhapy with the content contained in the RSS feed they simply unsubscribe and no longer receive notification of feed updates.

RSS is really a win, win for both subscribers and publishers.

In order to get a better understanding of how RSS works download an RSS reader and subscribe to an RSS feed (they are usually indicated by a small orange icon). If you are a looking for a desktop reader give FeedDemon a try http://www.feeddemon.com

Here are other RSS REaders - http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm
Goodluck!

Answer 3

An RSS feed is like a news summary in XML format.

With an RSS reader, you tell it to look at this feed, and to notify you if it sees any news featuring a certain keyword. If you want to know about Britney Spears, for example, you'd put in "Britney Spears", and so on and so forth. Then when it sees a news item from that feed that fits your filter, it'll pull that news article.

On a tech website, you can limit yourself to say, only built-it articles, and only those articles involving NVIDIA and/or Intel (or whatever else you want).

Is that making sense?

As for what RSS reader to get, there's bazillions out there, including the web-based ones. You can look them up yourself.

Answer 4

Try searching for an "RSS Directory" in the search engine.
YouTube has videos explaining RSS.
You can display and provide links for your Y!A questions, your starred questions, and the news that interests you on your Y!360 and MySpace pages with an RSS feed.
http://myspace.com/22449233
http://360.yahoo.com/profile-Kghdibk0bakzfbqFwi5dJt.z
The feed for my questions in MySpace updates faster than the one in my Y!360.

This website is for displaying RSS feeds in MySpace.
http://rssonmyspace.com

This website is for displaying RSS feesd in MySpace, Blogger, html, email, Google, Friendster, Hi5, and Xanga.
http://springwidgets.com/express/getFeed/

For Y!360:
Find your list of questions.
To the right of your most recent question you will see the RSS link.
Click on it with the right button then left click on copy shortcut (URL).
Or you can double click the RSS link and then copy the URL from your address bar.
In your Y!360 click "My Page."
http://360.yahoo.com/
Click "Add a Feed (via RSS)" or click "Edit Feeds."
Right click on one of the three boxes then left click on paste (the short cut - URL).
Then save.

You can also display information from:
Yahoo! News (for specific subjects like your state, country, or corporation)
http://news.yahoo.com/rss
MSN News
BBC News
Craigslist, Digg, Netflix, YouTube, and many periodicals,
and blogs from MySpace, Y!360 and other blog websites.