American Parkinson Disease Association, Washington Chapter

How would you like to save time and effort, by seeing the latest updates to your favorite Web sites without actually visiting each site? If your favorite sites offer a feature called "content syndication," this may be easier than you think! For this article, we'll use the example of the Web site for the Washington State chapter of the American Parkinson Disease Association, but there are countless other sites that provide this feature. Once you know what to look for, you may be surprised at how many of the sites you regularly visit can be "watched" through their content syndication.

Since it's a bit troublesome to say "content syndication" we can use the term "RSS" instead. That may not always be perfectly accurate, but it will be close enough for almost all purposes. There are many explanations for what the acronym RSS stands for, such as Really Simple Syndication and RDF Site Syndication, but to avoid confusion it's easiest to just call it RSS!

To use RSS, there are just two pieces to the puzzle: First, there is a Web site that provides RSS data, and second, there is some sort of RSS "reader" that will transform the ugly, computer-friendly RSS data into something that is easy for you to read. Of course, there are many Web sites to choose from, and many "readers" that you can use, but with just one of each, you're ready to get started. This article will describe both pieces of the puzzle, in terms of how they are important to you. Technical details will be left to the many in-depth references already available on the Web.

For our example of a Web site that provides RSS data, we will look at the Parkinson Pathfinder, a newsletter published on paper as well as on the Web site for the APDA (Washington Chapter). In addition to the newsletter itself, the Web site provides an announcement of new issues of the newsletter. Those announcements are presented in a people-friendly view for visitors to the Web site. The announcements are also presented in computer-friendly RSS data, called an RSS "feed." If "feed" seems like an odd choice of terms, just think of the decades-old practice of large news services like the Associated Press "feeding" news to TV, radio, and newspapers.

The interesting thing about RSS readers is that they can take many forms, including Web-based services, browser features, and dedicated software. Examples of each are shown below. Remember, in each of the following examples, the information published by the APDA is the sasme. It is the data provided in the RSS feed. Only the presentation changes, depending on which software or service is used.

For the first example of an RSS "reader" we will use Google Reader, which is a Web-based service. We will then compare that to other Web-based services, browser features, and dedicated software. This way, you can easily see how the same data can appear in different ways. (To clarify, RSS readers mentioned in this article are described for illustration purposes only; no endorsement of or by the APDA is implied.)

This screen clip shows how the Parkinson Pathfinder announcements appear in Google Reader. Click the small image to see the larger image:

Google Reader is one of the many Web-based services that are available as part of a Google account. Similarly, other large Web account services provide RSS-reading features. Here is the same Parkinson Pathfinder RSS data, this time presented in a My Yahoo! account, after using the "Add Content - Add RSS Feed" feature. Click the small image to see the larger image:

There is no need to create an account with any of the Web-based services just to read RSS feeds, however. As mentioned above, many Web browsers include RSS reading as a built-in function. The following screen clips show the same RSS data as above, but displayed using the built-in features of the Firefox and Opera browsers, in which RSS reading is called "Live Bookmarks" and "Feeds" (respectively). Click a small image to see the larger image:

 

Some software packages are designed just as RSS readers, nothing more. This screen clip shows the Parkinson Pathfinder RSS data being presented by Liferea, a free software package specifically designed to read RSS feeds:

Now that you've seen how one RSS feed, for the Parkinson Pathfinder, can be displayed by multiple readers, you may be wondering how you can find and use more RSS feeds on other sites. One thing that will help you find RSS feeds is the following symbol:

That symbol indicates that at least one RSS feed is available. Returning to the example of the Parkinson Pathfinder, if you go to the Web page that displays the newsletter announcements and scroll to the bottom of the page, you'll see that symbol. In this case, thee symbol is linked to the RSS feed itself, although this will not always be true. It depends on each site's owner and/or Webmaster whether the RSS icon will be linked directly to a feed. You may also notice that your Web browser adds that symbol to the address (URL) bar when a Web page has an associated RSS feed. This is also visible on the Parkinson Pathfinder page. Some sites will use an older-style image that looks like an orange button with "RSS" in white letters. If you see this, it means approximately the same as the symbol shown above.

If you want to experiment with some RSS feeds for sites you already use, look for the RSS symbol on blogs, news sites, and other sites that have information that changes on a frequent basis. Once you have added multiple RSS feeds to your RSS feed reader, you can begin checking for updates in one place (your feed reader) instead of multiple sites. When new content appears and is interesting to you, you can click the headline or other provided link to visit the site and read all of the details.

This article provided an overview of how you can use RSS feeds to keep track of multiple Web sites, all in one place. There is more to discover with content syndication, but hopefully this article will be a good starting point. Comments about this article may be directed to the author, Stuart Whitmore, or to the Washington State chapter of the American Parkinson Disease Association.

Photo credits: Wally Irwin, Darren Hester