Dare to Share

Some of you may already be using RSS Feeds, or Newsfeeds as I’d rather call them, to receive the latest news from the sites you love. If you do then this probably isn’t relevant for you but as you know what you’re doing then why not sign up for the latest posts from the Dare to Share site right now. If you’re haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about then please read on.

Firstly RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Don’t worry about that though - I always just refer to them as Newsfeeds because that’s what they do - they feed news to your reader. It allows you to receive the latest news from various sites direct to an application on your Mac or PC. Therefore you don’t have to visit the site every 5 minutes to check for new content as it will be delivered straight to your door!

So, what do you need to be able to see them? Well, there are online versions such as the Google Reader, NewsGator or Bloglines - all are great if you prefer to keep all of your stuff online to access from any machine. The best newsreaders for the PC include FeedDemon and Sharpreader. The best newsreaders for the Mac include NetNewsWire, Apple Mail’s In-built reader and Vienna which is my personal favourite. Many feeds are now available in email format so rather than having a dedicated app you’ll, instead, receive them by email which can be very useful. While we’re talking about that you can subscribe to the wonderful Dare to Share feed by email.

You’ve got your newsreader now how do you subscribe to rss feeds? You may have seen this icon before. Well if you have then this is the RSS Icon and it’s what you should be looking out for to denote there’s a feed available for that site. They also come in various colours and sizes. The site’s owner may not have used this but hopefully they’ll have made it obvious what to click in order to subscribe to the feed. Most browsers now show the RSS icon in the web address bar - so keep an eye out.

Clicking that link will either open up your chosen reader or you may get the option to subscribe via your favourite reader. If the feed opens up in a web page you may notice there’s lack of formatting to it but don’t worry - simply copy and paste the address into your chosen reader and it’ll do just the same trick.

Now, just wait and watch as your favourite sites feed their news direct to your reader. Simple as that!