News feeds allow you to read new content published by the websites you’re interested in without having to visit the websites regularly to see if there’s something new.
An RSS feed usually simplifies the information to the bare essentials: the content, whether this is text, images, podcasts or video.
As soon as websites with an RSS feed publish news, that news is available via their RSS feed so that you can read it in a way that suits you—whether you prefer to read news on your desktop, phone or tablet, by email or in a feed-reader.
These days feed-readers are available as web services, as apps for iPhone, iPad or Android, integrated as extensions to your browser, or as desktop tools, depending on your own preferences. Many feed-readers allow you to customise the appearance of the feed to suit your own reading preferences too.
Our news feed is available here:
Websites usually make their RSS feed link obvious, typically by using the RSS feed icon, as we have above. Once you’ve found the RSS feed on a site you’d like to follow, you can either:
Sites such as Netvibes can store and organise RSS feeds. Other popular sites include Feedly and Newsblur.
Once you’ve registered with one of these sites, then you can copy the link you want into the feed-reader's 'Add content' box.
Then you can visit your chosen site to read all the feeds you have collected in one place.
Software such as Feedreader, FeedDemon and RSSOwl also store and organise RSS feeds.
Once you’ve downloaded and installed the software from one of these sites – it's often free – you can copy the link you want into the 'Add content' box.
Then you can open your feed-reader software whenever you want to read all the feeds you have collected.