Purchasing

Mary Walker

No, RSS Feeds are not something to eat. You can’t even feed it to your pet. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is the way to distribute a list of headlines, update notices and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading.

 

Purchasing.Com provides this feature to its readers. Notice the icon “XML” and “XML sub” or the section on “Purchasing RSS”. I hit the “XML” icon many times and always wondered what the page with a funny print layout was for. I could not understand what good this was. 

 

RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organized and distinct. Emails were the early solution to this. Now people are bogged down with email and quick to delete emails if they don’t recognize the source immediately.

 

How does it work? RSS works by having the website author such as Purchasing.Com maintain a list of notifications on their website in a standard way. The list of notifications is called an “RSS Feed”. People who are interested in the latest headlines or changes can check this list. 

 

Special programs called “RSS aggregators” have been developed that automatically access the RSS feeds or websites you care about and organize the results for you. Once you get your reader up and running, you can add your favorite site Purchasing.Com and others like The New York Times, the BBC and Reuters, which are only a few of the available ones.

 

Purchasing.Com provides a list of RSS readers to install on your computer. http://blogspace.com/rss/readers. Many companies have a restriction on downloading programs on your computer. The computer is so smart it blocks you. In this case, use Google or Yahoo where you do not have to install a program on your computer.

My Yahoo has a customized page you can set up and a complete question and answer page that tells you exactly what to do. Believe me, if I was able to do this, anyone can.

 

I went with Google and got my Google Reader set up. Then I tried to figure out how to get the headers for Purchasing.Com on my reader. Each reader program is a little different, just look for an” add” button or something that indicates the same thing.

 

First you can search by keyword (ie. “England”) or for the specific source on site you want to add. Google will attempt to automatically discover the corresponding RSS URL. If the site is known, just click the “add” checkbox. I didn’t have any luck with this.

 

If you know the specific RSS URL for the source you want, just type or paste it and click the “add” button. The question is “How do I find the URL for a site’s RSS file/feed?”

The little white-in-orange “XML” button indicates that a website supports RSS. It usually points to the site’s RSS file. If you click the button, don’t worry about the text in your browser – all you need is the URL in the browser’s web address bar. To add the RSS feed to your reader, copy and paste.

 

Yesterday, I knew nothing about RSS Feed and by today I am an expert. Only joking.

Let’s say I know a lot more than I did. My reader shows the headlines from Purchasing.Com and also my blog section “Career Turns” I am excited and I had a lot of fun getting this set up. Try it. 

 

Industries: Career/Jobs