News Feed Me

by Nicholas Johnson, (8 March, 2006) in features > hi, tech

When I got my very first internet connection about 10 years ago, the only online task I did daily was check email. Back then, only a few major news outlets and a couple of very early adopters updated their websites on a regular basis. Most sites I knew about were either static advertisements for companies jumping on the web bandwagon or places for angsty nerds to publish their “poetry.”

Then man created blogs, and it was, well, if not good, at least more interesting. Suddenly everyone was writing on the web, and some people were even writing things worth reading. Angsty nerd poetry pages were replaced by sites offering fresh, interesting content that could develop a real readership. I started visiting more sites than just CNN.com every day.

But from frequently updated blogs arose a problem precisely opposite than the one I had when I first started using the internet: now I had too many sites I wanted to keep up with. Instead of just checking email and being done with it, I would check email and then go through all of my bookmarks to check for new content. Sure, it was only a matter of a few clicks, but I was living in the internet age, and a few clicks were too many.

Then, man created the news feed, and that was good. Now I only had to make one stop to be able to tell at a glance which sites had been updated since the last time I checked (probably five minutes ago, but that’s just me). And the more I played around with news feeds, the more I found they could actually be used for things more productive than finding out when my friends were writing about me.

Some explanations

At this point in the article you might be asking yourself two things: what’s a news feed and why, Nicholas, should I care about your stupid news feeds? Good questions.

A news feed is basically a file that gets updated every time its corresponding website is updated. Inside of this news feed file are things like the date and title of the update, the actual content of the update (or an excerpt of that content) and a link to the new content. Those who want to be notified when a website is updated can subscribe to the site’s news feed using a news reader–a program or website that, like the name implies, lets you read news feeds. You can subscribe to as many news feeds as you want with your news reader of choice, and can thus read all the new content from all your favorite websites all in one place.

Incidentally, a news feed can go by many names depending on the whim of the author and what technology is used to create it: an RSS feed, an XML feed, an Atom feed, a syndication feed or just a feed. I like news feed because, with “news” in the name, it sounds so much more respectable. I can’t see Bob Woodward reading an XML feed, but I think he’d be all over the news feeds.

Confused yet? Other people have explained the whole news feed concept much better than I have. And don’t worry, actually making use of a news feed is far easier than trying to explain it, I promise.

As to why you should care about making use of a news feed, I think they make keeping up to date with current events, reading quality online content and staying in touch with blogging friends far easier. Plus, SagaJET has its very own news feed, and surely you want to know the minute a new “Hi, Tech” is put online, right? Stop laughing.

Choosing a news reader

If you’re not already subscribing to news feeds and want to–even despite my muddled explanation–getting started is easy. The first thing you’ll need to do if find yourself a news reader.

News readers come in two varieties: programs you install on your computer or websites you access with any browser. Both kinds of news readers have their advantages and disadvantages. Readers you install on your computer are generally more customizable, but you need to be in front of your computer to use them. Web-based readers, on the other hand, usually give you fewer options but let you access them from any computer with an internet connection and a web browser.

There are plenty of news readers to choose from, but here’s a quick rundown of some of the most respected.

• FeedDemon. FeedDemon is probably the best-known newsreader for Windows. It does cost $29.95 (U.S.) to be able to use it legally, but that buys you a very flexible and stylish program that will be able to handle all the feeds you throw at it.
• NetNewsWire. NetNewsWire is to the Mac what FeedDemon is to Windows. Again, it costs money ($24.95 U.S.), but it’s regarded as miles ahead of any of the free readers out there.
• Feedreader. If the thought of paying for a news reader turns you off, check out Feedreader. It’s simple, lightweight and, best of all, free.
• Bloglines. Bloglines is a very easy to use web-based news reader. I’ve been using Bloglines for about a year now, and I haven’t wanted to use anything else since.
• NewsGator Online. If you want to try a web-based news reader that is not Bloglines (though I can’t imagine why), check out NewsGator Online.

Subscribing to a news feed

Once you’ve settled on a news reader, you’re ready to start subscribing to news feeds. In order to subscribe, you’ll need to find the addresses of your favorite websites’ news feeds (if they have a feed, which they probably do). Many sites will have a link to their feeds right on the front page, often in the form of an orange button. If you don’t see that button, look for a link called something like “subscribe,” “feeds” or “XML/RSS/Atom.”

Alternatively, if you want to subscribe to a news feed from someone’s Blogger/Xanga/LiveJournal blog, many news readers will let you enter that person’s username and will find the appropriate feed for you.

After you’ve subscribed to a few feeds, you can check in with your news reader as often as you like and any new content will be highlighted for you the moment its put online.

A few recommended feeds for JETs

Feedster tells me that there are currently something like 24 million news feeds you could subscribe to. Finding good stuff in that mess can be hard, so here are a couple of feeds I like that may be of interest to JETs. Note that most of the links below go right to the news feeds and not the sites themselves.

• Mainichi Daily News. MSN’s English language Japanese news site. Be warned that some really odd stories get mixed in with the regular old Japanese news here.
• NewsOnJapan.com. NewsOnJapan.com, as one might guess, collects news stories from all over the web about Japan, and its feed features quite a few of the latest headlines.
• tvRSS. Not that I’m saying you should, but if you wanted to, you could go over to tvRSS, search for your favorite TV shows not on in Japan that you might hypothetically download via BitTorrent, and get a news feed that tells you when a new episode is available. Theoretically. Downloading TV shows might be slightly illegal. You didn’t hear it from me.
• USGS Earthquake Tracker. The nice folks at the U.S. Geological Survey offer a news feed that updates every time they record an earthquake anywhere in the world. You’ll either be comforted when you see that most quakes they record for Japan are pretty minor, or terrified by all the quakes happening all the time.
• Saga Blog. It might be blog-cest for me to mention it, but Saga JETs have a community blog where they talk about things JETs tend to talk about. Since a new person is tapped to write each week, it stays pretty fresh, too.
• SagaJET. It’s definitely blog-cest for me to mention it, but we here at SagaJET have a news feed, too. Just in case you’re interested…