What is RSS?
In todays busy world with a choice of billions of web pages, keeping up to date with the information you want can be a nightmare.
It would be much better to have the latest information delivered directly to you, rather than clicking from site to site.
RSS allows you to see when sites from all over the internet have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and articles from sites such as the BBC or Sky News/Sports (or even audio files, photographs or video) in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to remember to visit each site every day.
There is some online discussion as to what RSS stands for, but most people plump for 'Really Simple Syndication'. RSS feeds are just a special kind of web page, designed to be read by computers rather than people. It might help to think of them as the free, internet version of the old-fashioned ticker-tape news wire machines.
It takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date, by showing you the very latest information that you are interested in.
Not all websites currently provide RSS, but it is growing rapidly in popularity and many others, including the Guardian, New York Times and CNN provide it.
We have RSS feeds for all of our latest reviews plus the various top 10 pages.
How do I start using RSS feeds?
In general, the first thing you need is something called a news feed reader. This is a piece of software that checks RSS feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added to them. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser such as firefox and the new internet explorer version 7, and some of which are downloadable applications. Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail.
Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want to receive in your news reader, by finding and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds. For example, if you would like the latest Wine Reviews, simply click on the RSS button on the bottom of the reviews section on the home page.
RSS feed buttons on our site look like:
So where ever you see these icons, click on them to be taken to the feed information. |
