News Feeds at Ohlone College
Ohlone College's news feed file of general updates and announcements is published at:
What is an RSS news feed? Just the basics, please…
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary - take your pick!). It is a format for distributing and gathering content from websites.
 Updates are offered via RSS "feeds" on a variety of web logs (blogs), business, technology, news, entertainment, sports, libary, and university/college websites - think of RSS as a "What's New" list.- You control which websites you receive information from because you sign-up for (subscribe to) RSS feeds you are interested in.
- Ohlone College publishes an RSS feed at http://www.ohlone.edu/index.xml. We may publish additional RSS feeds in the future (at that time, this page will include a list of Ohlone's RSS feeds).
- CNN, ESPN, Yahoo! News and many other websites offer RSS feeds.
To use RSS feeds, you need two things:
- Feed reader software
- A website offering one or more feed files
More detail, please…
You Need a Feed Reader
To use feeds, you can use a web-based feed reader service or install feed reader software (also called a "news reader" or "feed/news aggregator") to display feeds in a format that humans can read, understand, and use.
There are many feed reader software programs available. Three options are listed below:
- Google Reader is a free web-based service where you can keep track of all your subscriptions and view them anywhere you are connected to the Internet. Since it doesn't require software installation, it's an easy way to start using RSS feeds.
- FeedReader is an open source ("free"), downloadable RSS feed reader. It is easy to download, install, and use on your computer.
- Bloglines is a free web-based service where you can set up your own personal feed reader account. Since it doesn't require software installation, it's an easy way to start using RSS feeds.
- iTunes allows you to download Podcast feeds.
Here's a good FAQ about How to Use an RSS Reader.
Subscribe to a Feed
When you subscribe to a feed, you tell your feed reader that you want it to periodically get information from a particular website's feed file.
Websites offering a feed usually display one or more of these small buttons:
- orange rounded-square icon with white arcs
- orange "XML"
- blue "RSS"
Selecting the button may display a rather cryptic file or a web page listing the feeds available from that website. Simply copy the website address for the feed you are interested in and paste it into the add-a-feed feature of your feed reader program.
 Reading a Feed
When you want to read the content published by the websites you've subscribed to, you tell your feed reader to update those feeds. The feed reader retrieves information from the RSS feed file and displays the headline or title for each news item. When you select the headline/title, additional information about that item displays, along with a link to the full content on the publisher's website.
More About RSS
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