Basics

For Cleftstick alumni…

For participants of earlier courses back for refreshers: If you can't find the page you're looking for in the menus above and along the side, try entering a search term in the search box. The menus and sub-menus are reconfigured for individual classes, so that topics not covered don't crowd out the ones that will be. But the pages are still there.

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RSS: The Basics

Here’s an explanation from Wikipedia.

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a way to package stuff–any kind of digital data–together so that it can be delivered more easily. Think of it like a wire service feed: Reuters, or AP, deliver their stories via one pipe (what used to be a ticker, spewing out paper onto the office floor):

image

(still from Lou Grant)

RSS can be a feed from a blog, or a government news service, or even audio (podcasts, for example, are delivered by RSS.)

The main advantages?

  • You don’t need to go visit lots of websites to see whether they’ve been updated.
  • You don’t need to fill your email inbox with lots of email alerts and newsletters.
  • RSS feeds can also be read on your cellphone.
  • You can organise feeds by topic and more easily keep on top of information.
  • If you use a web-based reader you can read your feeds at any Internet-connected computer.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed in a reader which is either a piece of software, or, more commonly now, in a web-page. The best one right now is the Google Reader.

For how to set up your Google Reader, go here.

For how to subscribe to a feed in Google Reader, go here.

Most news services, blogs, forums, bulletin boards and many web pages have their own feeds.

Here’s a brief selection of Singapore-related RSS feed pages: