RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) feeds are free content feeds from websites that contain article headlines, summaries, and links back to full-text articles on the web. FIRE’s RSS feeds contain the full text of our articles.
For more information, you can read this article from the Washington Post, or this article from the New York Times.
RSS is an easy way for you to be alerted when content that interests you appears on your favorite websites. Instead of having to visit a particular website to browse for new articles and features, RSS automatically tells you when something new is posted online.
For example, if you subscribe to “The Torch RSS Feed,” each time a new blog posting is made it will appear in your news reader automatically without your having to visit the FIRE site.
To start using RSS, you need a special news reader or aggregator that displays RSS content feeds from the websites you select. There are many different news readers available, many of which are free of charge. Most are available as desktop software that you download and install on your computer. Several web-based news readers are available as well.
List of news readers (Yahoo)
List of news readers (Google)
Once you have set up your news reader, you simply subscribe to the RSS content feeds you want. Click on one of the RSS feed links to obtain the RSS URL, which you will see in the “Address” field of your browser. Simply copy this URL and follow the instructions for your particular news reader to subscribe.