.Tired of checking your class Web pages every day to see whether I've posted anything new? Tired of missing important news because you forgot to check?
Try using an RSS news feed as a way to help you keep up with changes I make in the class Web pages! If you are already using RSS, you can subscribe to news about your class and find out about changes using your RSS reader. It works like any other RSS news feed; the orange icon on your class Web page is a link to an XML file with the news content. If you're not already using RSS, read New to RSS? below.
The news feeds for my classes are in RSS 2.0 format. Any relatively recent RSS reader should be able to handle them.
If you have an opinion about the utility (or lack thereof!) of RSS feeds for this purpose, please write to me: .
The RSS news feed and the "Announcements" page of the class Web contain the identical material. If you do not want to use RSS, you can keep up with class announcements by checking the "Announcements" page frequently. The RSS feed is just an alternative way of delivering the same information. Announcements that your RSS reader may have "aged off" will be available in the "Announcements" page all semester, too.
RSS (and Atom) are methods of using the Internet, specifically HTTP, the protocol of the World Wide Web, to "syndicate" news and other information. The data are in XML files in one of four or five formats. You can use a news reader program or Web service to subscribe to a number of news feeds. The reader program automatically checks for updates every few hours and displays the latest news for you. If you want more details, you can check this article(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed) from Wikipedia.
To read RSS feeds, you will need (as you might expect) an RSS reader. The folks at allrss.com have published a Compendium of RSS Readers. (http://allrss.com/rssreaders.html) Free readers recommended by people I trust include Feedreader (http://www.feedreader.com/) and Rss Bandit (http://www.rssbandit.org/)for MS Windows operating systems and Vienna for Mac OS 10.3.9 and up.
I am using Feedreader to test my feeds. It has the great advantage of being free. You can get your own copy of it here: http://www.feedreader.com/. Feedreader will happily sit in the system tray and download news for you. When a new item is available, Feedreader alerts you with a sound (optional) and a pop-up window. In case you aren't near your computer, the icon in the system tray changes, too. To get your class news into Feedreader (and most other desktop reader programs), do the following:
Class news in Feedreader looks like the image at the right.
For Mac users, Vienna for OS 10.3.9 and up is also free and presents a similar interface. You can find out more about Vienna or download it here: http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna2.php
Google also has an RSS reader service. If you have a Google account and you've installed the Google toolbar, you have a "subscribe" button that will let you read class news on your Google home page.
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Last updated: 2006-12-26 7:10