RSS Feeds are appearing on lots of web pages anymore. You can find them mostly on sites where information changes often like the The BBQ Forum Blog and the Podcast page. Simply stated if you copy the RSS Feed of these sites into a feed reader you can receiver almost instant notification on your computer screen whenever new items are added to the web page.

The first thing you need to do is get a “Feed Reader.” Just go to someplace like http://www.download.com and search on the phrase feed reader. You can find them costing everywhere from Free to around $50. To begin with get a free one like FeedReader. It’s a free program that works well and if you really like this stuff buy a better one, with a lot more features. They will all notify you in different ways when the web page your watching has something new added to it. The more expensive ones will download that new item to your computer while you sleep so you can, for example, upload the latest PodCast to your IPod in the morning and listen to it on the way to work.

You can find RSS feeds on web pages by looking for the link or the small orange image that has RSS on it. You probably should look for the one that has RSS 2 on it. You then right click on the link or image and mouse down to the link that reads “copy shortcut.” When you do this you put the shortcut link into your computers clipboard.

Then you open your feed reader and open up the “Add Feed” box, or what ever they call it on your reader.

Then paste the feed in the dialogue box that opens up. You paste it on a PC computer by pressing the Ctrl and V keys at the same time. Now you have created a new feed.

With the free “FeedReader” program then need to name the feed and your ready to go. The alerts will pop up on your computer screen when new items are added to the web page your watching. With FeedReader these notifications appear on the bottom right of your computer screen. Set the program preferences and your in the RSS bussiness.

Ray Basso