Blogs at Penn State Community

This Page

1. What's a Newsfeed?
   
   1. What are RSS and ATOM?
   2. Quick Examples
2. Educational Uses
3. Who Has News Feeds?
   
   1. News Organizations
   2. Blogs
   3. Other Web sites
4. Applications to View Newsfeeds
   
   1. Preview RSS in Browsers
   2. Newsreaders
   3. Web Services
   4. Penn State Portal
   5. Thunderbird (Win/Mac/Linux)
   6. Google News Alert E-mails
      
5. Where to Subscribe

What's a Newsfeed?

A newsfeed is an XML text file which sends information about news items to a newsreader application like the Penn State Portal or by some browsers including Safari 2, Opera 8 or Internet Explorer 7.

What are RSS and ATOM?

These are two specifications (written in XML) which contain news headlines and summarys which can be read by a news reader

Sites with newsfeeds are marked with colored icon links saying RSS, XML or ATOM. RSS feeds are more common and simpler to create, but ATOM feeds may contain more informaiton including images.

You may need a newsreader or feed reader to view these sites. See the Plugins section below for information on obtaining newsreaders.

Quick examples

• Penn State Portal Channels - Each "channel" reads a RSS XML file and displays it in the channel
• BBC World News - This page uses an XSLT style sheet to display the RSS file in a browser.
• TLT Computing with Accents Newsfeed - This page combines RSS with CSS style sheets so it can be readable in a normal browser.
• Your Daily Art Blog - Includes a Newsfeed
• Language Log - Linguists writing on language news and linguistics phenomena in the media

Top of Page

Educational Uses

Some educational benefits of monitoring newsfeeds include.

1. Monitoring RSS Feeds can allow students and instructors to gather the latest news and information about key subtopics.
2. RSS newsreaders enables more efficient scanning of news headlines, so that users can select only a few articles to read in depth.

Top of Page

Who Has RSS Feeds?

Blogs

Many blogs, including Blogs at Penn State, include a subsidiary RSS feed. Look for the Subscribe link or the RSS or XML icon.

News Organizations

Many news organizations contain RSS feeds (often marked with an RSS icon or XML icon). Some examples include the following. To find a news organization's RSS page, look at the bottom of the page or to the side.

• Penn State Live
• Washington Post RSS Feeds
• CNN News RSS
• New York Times RSS Feeds
• BBC News

Note: You may need a specialized news reader plugin or application to view the contents as a channel. Otherwise, you may see a series of XML tags.

Other Web Sites

It does not require much effort to set up an RSS feed, so many people or organizations have created an RSS feed to provide specialized news stories. Here are just a few random examples.

• Stone Pages Archaeology News
• Life in the USA - American life described for newly arrived immigrants

Top of Page

Applications to View Newsfeeds

RSS is a technology different from regular HTML Web pages and usually requires special news reader plugins or applications to view RSS feeds correctly. These applications convert a feed to a "channel" with headlines and link to full stories.

Here are some examples of news reader applications supporting RSS files.

Preview RSS Feeds in Browsers

The following browsers have simple RSS Support. They allow to quickly view the content of a feed, but not necessarily manage subscriptions.

• Internet Explorer 7 (Win)
• Safari 2+ (Mac)
• Firefox Extensions/Add Ons Section

Firefox, Opera and Camino also have RSS support but they may assume that you use a separate RSS reader (as listed in the next "Separate RSS Newsreaders" section.

To View feeds

1. Click any RSS link or enter in any RSS URL with the .xml or .rss extension (e.g. http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss.xml)
   Note: In Internet Explorer, you can also click the orange feed broadcast icon ().
   Note: In Safari, you can also click the blue RSS icon () in the address bar.
2. A new window will appear listing headlines and links.
   Note: Safari converts addresses to feed:// instead of http://

To Manage Subscriptions

The applications below are recommended if you want to manage subscriptions.

Separate RSS News Readers

If you wish to follow a newsfeed regularly, then a newsreader is recommended because they indicate new headlines and they allow you to organize your RSS feeds into category folders. Some common freeware news readers include:

• Feed Reader (Windows)
• Net News Wire Lite (Mac OS X) - There's also a for-fee full version
• Straw (Linux)
• RSS Info List

To subscribe to a news feed, find the New Channel or Subscribe button command, then copy and paste any URL ending with the .xml or .rss extension. The new "channel" will be added.

Use the folder option in each package to create categories for newsfeeds. Folders will typically list new headlines in each category; you can then click inside the folder to see individual subscriptions.

Top of Page

Web Services

There are also online services which let you subscribe to and organize your feeds. The advantage is that you can access your newsfeeds from any computer, but the data is stored off your computer and can be lost. Like the freeware applications, these usually include folder category support. Common ones include:

• Bloglines.com
• Google Reader

Top of Page

Penn State Portal

Each channel on the Penn State Portal is an RSS feed. The links for the headlines direct you to an HTML page with the full news story. Below is an example of the My PSU News channel with headlines.

Each headline links to an HTML page of the story on the external Penn State Live site.

Top of Page

Thunderbird (Win/Mac/Linux)

The freeware e-mail package Thunderbird (from Mozilla.org) also has the ability to collect and monitor newsfeeds. To add newsfeeds. Thunderbird is also available on the CLC Student Computing labs.

Set Up a Blog & New Account.

1. Open the Thunderbird e-mail application.
2. Go to File » New » Account. Check the option for RSS News & Blogs and click Next.
   Note: This window will automatically appear for new users.
3. In the next window, you can assign a distinctive name for the Blogs & News folders. Click Next then Finish. A new folder with a newspaper icon will appear in the left.

Add a Feed

1. Open a browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, then go to a Web site with an RSS feed.
2. Click any RSS link or enter in any RSS URL with the .xml or .rss extension (e.g. http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss.xml).
3. Go to Edit » Copy to copy the URL for the newsfeed.
4. In Thunderbird, click on the newspaper icon on the left for your feeds.
5. In the right side, click Manage subscriptions.
6. In the RSS Subscriptions window, click the Add button to the right.
7. Go to Edit » Paste to enter the URL for the newsfeed. Make sure it has either an .xml or .rss extension and that the initial part of the URL is http:// (not feed:// from Safari).
8. You will see a message that items are being downloaded. Click OK when you are finished.
9. The feed will be listed in the left under the newspaper icon (click arrow by the newspaper to down position to see all feeds)

Top of Page

Google News Alerts E-mails

If you want headlines to be fed into your e-mail, you can try the Google News Alert system. This lets you set up an automated e-mail bulletin based on key words (e.g. "Penn State"). Alerts can be e-mailed to you every day or every week.

Top of Page

Where to Subscribe

Once you have selected a plugin or newsreader application, you will need to find the feeds to subscribe to. Here are some lists of feeds available.

• The Media Drop Newspaper RSS Listing
• Science Port
• HUMBUL Humanities Feeds - They can even be licensed.
• Newsfeed Finder Com
• 2RSS Com

Top of Page