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How To Get Up-to-Date Weather Info Via RSS Feeds
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Author: Jeff Griffin
Topic: Communication
Viewed: 72 time(s)
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If you haven't heard about RSS or Atom feeds don't feel bad. I
just started using them about 4 months ago myself. Still, you
can take a step right now to take your web surfing to the next
level. Perhaps you have heard of Blogs or Weblogs as they are
properly called. These gems of the web started out and still
continue today as diaries or journals put up on the net by those
that just like to write and share their everyday world with the
outside. These, still at this time, June, 2005, are still the
largest part of blogging on the world wide web. You can find
these very easily by going to Google or Yahoo and typing in a
subject followed by the word blog. For example, I just typed in
Tornado Blogs into a Google search box and got 150 different
blogs about tornadoes. With that kind of exposure you can find
blogs on any subject on earth. The great thing about this is
that after you decide which blogs are your favorite you can put
them in your favorites, bookmarked or otherwise presented on you
desktop. The great thing is that many, including myself, have
gone to the next level and have turned their blogs into RSS
Feeds. A very simple process if you use Blogger.com If RSS is
the same as blogs then what's all this blog stuff? Let me
explain, Blogs and RSS feeds are not quite the same. In short,
the blogging idea was picked up and many major news sources like
Fox and CNN and on and on started putting their own blogs out in
the form of newfeeds. Simply RSS stands for Really Simple
Syndication. And we as end users can gain access to the latest
news about anything including weather on our desktops. Yet,
doing this is a mystery to so many that I decided to put this
report on the website so that you could gain instant access to
newsfeeds and hopefully my own TipsOnTornadoes blog and RSS
feeds. Now, you should understand that newfeeds are similar to
HTML and require a special piece of software that allows you to
read the feed. The computer language is similar to HTML on a web
page but not really the same. To read a feed we need a "reader".
There are many "readers" available for free online. The one that
I use is Feedreader, available at Feedreader.com. The download
is free. It is simple to download and easy to use. It has a
great feature that helps me out a great deal. That feature is a
little balloon that rises up off your task bar when one of your
favorite feeds has just uploaded a new article for you to read.
The significance of this will become apparent in a moment. I
wrote this article for my subscribers to enjoy my tornado blogs
as well as any other content they can subscribe to. Every time I
upload a new blog to my RSS feed you can receive the notice that
something new is available. And let me say, I update a great
deal with stories from all over the globe which relate to
weather. While I would like to think that you would love to see
my feeds show up on your desktop every time I upload one, I'm
not that naive. The real beauty of this feature, for those
interested in weather, occurs when you subscribe to a NOAA feed
for your state. You see as the NWS issues alerts for your state
the Feedreader window will pop up and you can take a look to see
if your exact area is going to be effected by the weather that
is maturing. How cool is that? It's like a Weather Alert radio
on your computer. These feeds are not exactly easy to find. The
NOAA feeds for your state come in this format
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/alerts/co.rss where "co" is the state of
Colorado or the two-letter postal identifier for your state. So,
all you have to do is copy this link into your feedreader and
change the co (in this link) to the two-letter identifier for
your own state. As you may expect that there are search engines
for RSS feeds. They work similar to Yahoo, MSN, Google and
others. The trouble is finding them. So here are a few for you
to peruse and choose your favorite(s). My favorite is
Feedster.com. Chordata.info Syndic8.com Feedsfarm.com
Feedster.com Now, that you know what RSS feeds are you may be
wondering about these little RSS and Atom tags you see on some
web pages. First, let me show you a tag that I am speaking
about. While there are subtle differences in the programming of
RSS, RSS 2.0 and Atom feeds most readers like Feedreader and
Pluck read either format so to you, the viewer, the operation is
seamless. However, it should note that RSS 2.0 is written to
include enclosures. An enclosure as applied to RSS is the same
as an attachment with your email. It simply is something added
to the entire file. You may have heard of Podcasts. Podcasts use
RSS 2.0 or RSS with enclosures and that is where the audio
portion of the feed is kept. The regular part of the RSS is used
to present show data like who the artist is and title of the
podcast. I only added this here to help you understand what the
differences were when you see the various tags. Now, that you
have seen these tags let us examine how to use these tags to our
benefit. In general, these RSS or Atom tags are encoded with the
link to the various links. You will see these on my websites
like TipsOnTornadoes.com or GetYourBizGoing.com However, just
clicking on these images or RSS tags as I have been calling
them. Nothing happens. A newsfeed doesn't pop up or do you get
redirected to some other page. What you have to do is "right
click" the tag and save the link You click on "copy link" as
shown and then install it in your feedreader. Then after you
have internally saved the link or copied the link, you can go to
your feedreader so that you can save that newfeed and update it
as you prefer. New updates when using feedreader will appear in
the bottom right corner by your systray. On the next page I will
show you how to enter the feed into your Feedreader . How To
Enter the RSS Feed into Feedreader To add the copied link to
your Feedreader you open the "File" tab at the top left of the
page and choose "Add New Feed". Using your keyboard command of
Ctrl + V the link will magically appear in the window. Then you
choose the "Next" button and finish the process. It is just that
simple and now you have a new feed entered into your Feedreader.
You will start getting updates immediately if there are any to
be updated to your chosen feed. If you want to check you can
just check on the green button with Ying and Yang arrows to
update all feeds on your Feedreader. At this point you should be
able to procede to the feedreader site of your choice, I
recommend Feedreader.com and Pluck.com for the best or most used
readers. Once you download your reader you'll be able to enjoy a
whole new world of online surfing. Plus, you get alerts that
will inform you when your favorite RSS feeds have new content.
This is a very sweeeeeet thing. You will wonder, just like the
internet, how you did without this for so long. You won't want
to do without it after this. Enjoy!
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