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Get KUAM News headlines, Familiar Faces, police blotters as syndicated newsfeeds in your RSS aggregator applications
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by Jason Salas, KUAM News
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
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I've gotten several e-mails over the past week from people using RSS aggregator applications, both web-based and for the desktop, that want to know how to subscribe to the KUAM News headlines with them. This is totally possible with KUAM.COM - all you need to do is direct your aggregator to subscribe to one or more of our free feeds, and you're all set!
If you've read this far and are now wondering what the heck I'm talking about but are nonetheless curious about RSS newsfeeds, here's the skinny. Several free programs can be downloaded over the World Wide Web that allow you to easily subscribe to and read from syndicated information feeds, over topics such as news, sports, financial market info, the entertainment beat, and so on. These "aggregators" use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and are a great, fast alternative to reading full-on articles over the public Web if all you want is raw content.
If you're a devout online user and have used Internet newsgroups (NNTP) from way back in history (circa 1998), you'll be comfortable with reading RSS feeds.
You simply install an aggregator on your PC and it does the rest, constantly tracking newsfeeds from various data sources. Most aggregators will alert you when new posts are added to a site, and some of the better ones even integrate with your e-mail client. Personally, I use RSS Bandit, largely because I know several of the people who wrote the core program and contribute feeds to it. It's also got Microsoft Internet Explorer baked into it, so you can toggle between reading from the aggregator and a traditional desktop web browser.
Several aggregators are available from all operating systems, so just Google the topic and pick the one that fits you best.
Content providers exist all over the place, ranging from professional companies to personal weblogs, and almost all are free to subscribe to. As content providers, web sites publish data feeds that conform to the RSS 2.0 specification (commonly previously referred to as the Resource Description Framework (RDF)), a large document that defines the syndication structure for feeds transmitted over the Internet using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Most blogging programs output author posts as XML anyway, so this is a great way to keep tabs on your favorite blogs.
Newsfeeds are actually quite easy to setup and we publish and maintain several such feeds here at KUAM.COM:
KUAM News daily feeds
Guam Police Daily Blotter
Community-submitted Familiar Faces
Decision 2004 news stories
Decision 2004 blog
Further, those of you who are software developers out there reading this case use the links above as data sources within your own projects and hit our content directly. It's really very flexible.
So, if you're currently an RSS addict, use the links above and subscribe to our free feeds. If I've painted a decent enough picture to make you want to get into RSS'ing, it's really fun and a cool way to experience the Internet - and realize just how much stuff is out there. You never know where you'll find a gem of information in the virtual mess that is today's Web.
Happy hunting - and have fun!
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