Diamonds in the Rough: RSS Aggregators

Would you be interested if I told you that you could have your own, personalized newspaper, for free, cleanly organized, with up-to-the-minute information, and with sources from the local paper, the newswires, the web sites that you like, and people “in the know” who you trust? Get interested because you can have all this.

The magic is an RSS aggregator which pulls together the “RSS feeds” from anywhere and everywhere. It sounds technical but it is actually stone simple. In plain English, the RSS aggregator is like a TV. Each RSS feed is like a TV station. The feeds contain items, much like a TV show or an email message (though that does not fit within my TV analogy).

This article is a work-in-progress. I will be changing it from time to time and updating the publication date, so you will see it pop up again in your RSS aggregator. Don’t worry; that’s intentional. It means that I have added significant new content.

All you need to do is

1. Sign up with an on-line aggregator or get an aggregator program to run on your computer.
2. Add the RSS feeds for your favorite web sites to the aggregator.
3. Look at your aggregator hourly or daily or however often you wish to see what is happening the your world.

Trust me. If you can pry an hour free from your busy schedule, you want to try this stuff.

First, get an RSS aggregator. I found two that I like.

• Thunderbird has one built in that is pretty nice. Thunderbird runs on both Windows and Mac, as well as Linux, etc.; and it makes your RSS items look like regular email messages.
• Bloglines is web-based, and suits my needs better because I regularly read my RSS feeds from two different computers. You may like Bloglines, too, because you do not have to install any software. Just sign up and use it.

Both are free, of course. Thunderbird comes from the Mozilla Foundation and Bloglines is part of AskJeeves. The nice thing is that you can easily switch from one to the other so don’t fret too much about picking the right one before experimenting a bit.

Second, look at the web sites that you like to read and find their RSS feeds. These usually have graphics like one or more of these or something similar

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You will find them on almost any web site that is regularly updated, such as CNN.com, your local newspaper, Netflix, etc.

Adding the RSS feed to your aggregator is very simple. Just cut ‘n’ paste the URL of the web page or the RSS feed into your aggregator. (Yes, that is really all there is to it!) For instance, to add the current Wunderground weather for St. Charles, MO to an aggregator, you just need to paste http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=63304 which is the URL of the regular web page for the weather. Alternatively, you could add the feed’s URL, which in this case is http://www.wunderground.com/auto/rss_full/MO/Saint_Charles.xml Finally, you might find a button on the page like one of these:

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In this case, press the button that corresponds to your aggregator.

Third, open up your RSS aggregator and start clicking. Explaining this part would be like trying to explain email. It is best learned by doing.

To get you started, here is my “blogroll,” the RSS feeds that I monitor. Click this link to see them at Bloglines.

Do you remember when you wondered what could be on the web that you might want to see? Do you remember when you wondered why anyone would want to use email? Some day, you will look back and remember when you wondered what all the fuss was regarding RSS aggregators.