Why War? is making available all of our content about the anti-war movement and related issues on RSS feeds.
- Combined Feed
- News & Opinion Feed
- Commentary Feed
- Features Feed
- Guides & Documentation Feed
- Primary Sources Feed
What is this?
An RSS file is basically a list of headlines encoded so that it can be easily used by another program or website. RSS is usually said to stand for "Really Simple Syndication" and it is relatively easy to implement and use. RSS is a form of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which means that each piece of data in the list — a headline, a description of a story — is coded separately so that a program will know exactly what to do with it.
Programs that know what to do with RSS files are called "news aggregators." They let you read headlines from dozens or hundreds of news sites at one time. You simply plug in the addresses of the RSS files you want, such as the ones listed above.
News aggregators are proliferating, for a variety of platforms and degrees of technical expertise. Some popular ones are Amphetadesk (for Windows, Linux, or Mac), Radio (for Windows or Mac), NetNewsWire (for Mac), KlipFolio (for Windows — you can download the special klip file), NewzCrawler (for Windows), WinRSS (for Windows), and FeedReader (a bare-bones Estonian PC version).
If you don't want to install any software, you might try websites that do the aggregation for you. Bloglines offers an increasingly slick interface, while MyWireService lets you add bunches of related feeds at once. There's also Oddpost (for Windows), a paid web-based e-mail service that includes a built-in aggregator.
Six software packages that work only with Windows and require Microsoft's .NET to be installed on your PC (and if you have to ask what that is, you probably don't have it) are: VoxLite, Wildgrape News Desk, Syndirella, Aggie, NewsGator, and SharpReader.
Other interesting RSS applications: a Java installation is required for nntp//rss, a program which lets you read RSS files in Outlook Express or any other newsgroup-reading software. Or if you'd like your RSS headlines in a news ticker, try wTicker (for Windows). A program called ToolButton adds a toolbar to your browser, with all the headlines for a site under a button.
For more information on the implications and uses of RSS, you can read these articles from the Online Journalism Review and the American Press Institute. For more on using and creating RSS feeds, turn to this tutorial from the Utah State Library. —Christian Science Monitor
