Skip redundant pieces

RSS Icon RSS Feeds and Content Syndication

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like CNN or BBC, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way. An RSS feed automatically keeps track of updates for you, so you always know when new content has been added to your favorite site.

RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.

Office of the Provost RSS Feeds
Readers and Clients
There are many readers that will read an RSS feed. If you use certain internet browsers (such as Firefox or Safari) or are a blogger, you likely already have an RSS reader on your computer.

There are literally hundreds of RSS/news readers available, we recommend that you try a few out if you've never used one. If you just want live bookmarks to your favorite websites though, you may want to try out Firefox.

Firefox
The Firefox web browser has a built in function called a Live Bookmark that allows you to link to an RSS feed as a bookmark in your browser.

When you see the "Live Bookmark" icon in the address bar of your Firefox browser window you can click on it an add a feed to your bookmarks.

Opera 9 and Internet Explorer 7
Other browsers, such as Opera 9 and Internet Explorer 7, also support RSS Feeds directly through the web browser.

Opera 9

Internet Explorer 7