What are Newsfeeds?

Chances are good that you, like millions of others, get a portion of your daily news from websites.

Websites like The New York Times, CNN, USA Today, and your local newspaper are frequently updated to give you the latest news. There are also many specialized websites that are updated less frequently with news from science, technology, entertainment, sports, Etc.

In fact, with sites becoming so complex and numerous, an increasing amount of time is required to just visit them to see if any new content of interest has been added.

There is a better way!

Newsfeeds, also known as RSS feeds, can give you an up-to-date summary of what is new on your favorite sites without having to visit them. They show you the very latest information that is of interest to you.

You can see what newsfeeds have to offer by clicking on for each feed on the previous page.

To take advantage of newsfeeds not listed, you will need a feed aggregator. There are two types of feed aggregators, online and standalone. An online aggregator resides on a website and can be accessed by the browser on any computer. A standalone aggregator is a program that is installed on your computer.

Newsgator is a free online aggregator that works well. Just click on the Newsgator icon to go to their website where you can sign up for a free account. Be sure to write down your user name and password because you will need them to sign-in.

BottomFeeder is a free standalone aggregator which can be downloaded from http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/BottomFeeder and installed on your computer. It is available in versions for both PC's and Mac's.

If you see the Newsgator button on a website, you can add it to your Newsgator subscriptions just by clicking on it. You will also see icons like those below on many websites.

Graphic courtesy of Rogers Cadenhead

You may also see the new common feed icon . To subscribe to any of these, right click on the icon and select "Copy Link Location". Then select "Add a feed" on Newsgator and select the "URL & Import" tab and paste the URL into the form provided. The procedure is similar for BottomFeeder but you will have to use CTRL-V to paste it into the space provided.

An easier way is to subscribe to all of the feeds listed on the previous page by right clicking on this link http://northeastflorida.humanists.net/newsfeeds.opml and selecting "Copy Link Location". On Newsgator select "Import" and use CTRL-V to paste into the place provided for a URL. In BottomFeeder select "Import feeds" under "File" and use CTRL-V to paste into the place provided for the file name.