Get the most out of the Internet

Internet is everywhere now, it conquered the world in a very short period of time. Back in 1996 when it all began I remember I had to bike 30 minutes to get to the nearest Internet Café to have a drink after school and be able to surf the Web using a dial-up connection which wasn’t very fast. It was very expensive too. Cable was a distant rumour and sounded very futuristic. Now in 2007 I’m used to have a high speed broadband cable connection. Over 70% of Dutch households have cable. Internet is a revolution, it changed the way we have access to information for good. There’s more information available then we can process. A nightmare for someone who wants to be kept up-to-date on what’s happening. Fortunately there’s new web-technology available that partly solves this problem. It’s called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). You probably encountered RSS feeds on sites before, possibly you aren’t really familiar with the phenomenon and its possibilities, that’s why I write this article.

What RSS basically is is nothing more than a file hosted somewhere. It’s a very small file that doesn’t contain media. It only tells certain software applications, called feed readers or news aggregators, where the media you are looking for can be found on the web. Such a piece of software works in a similar way as an e-mail client does. If fetches the information according to a scheduled interval. Did something change since the last time it checked, you get notified. You then can decide if you want to read it (in case of a news or weblog feed) or download it (in case of an audio or video feed). You don’t need to visit a gazillion sites a day to stay informed. This software application will do it for you. If this sounds like something that could potentially save you a lot of time, hang on. I’ll explain how RSS-feeds can be recognized on internet pages and how you can use them.

News Feeds and feed readers

News sites and web logs are two examples of sites where new information is posted frequently. So most of these sites usually have a RSS feed available. It can be recognized either by a logo (orange square with white ‘broadcast waves’) similar to the one at the left hand of the ones you see below. You probably see also one at the top left of my website. There are two of them. You can subscribe to new posts of this blog or to new comments.
Subscribing can be done web-based or using an installed application (desktop version) on your system. The desktop version works like an e-mail client. One of the most popular feed readers actually IS an e-mail client: Mozilla Thunderbird. Other options are Feedreader (Windows) and Twins WebNews (Windows). These aren’t the only ones available, if you’re in an adventurous mood you can find a lot for different applications for Windows, Mac OSx and Linux here.
One of the most widely used web based feed readers is Google Reader by Google. The downside of that one is you login using a Google account, like a gmail-address. Since I’m a Gmail-user and also use Google Docs, this is the one of my choice. I can access it at home and on my mobile device. You have to be online to download the headers of those feeds, so to me it’s more intuitive to use a web based reader. But that’s a personal preference.

How do you subscribe?

So now you’ve found the buttons on web sites, and got hold of a feed reader what do you do next? How do you subscribe? This depends a bit from the browser you are using. I use Firefox and this browser asks me every time I click on a feed what I want to do with it. Which service or which client do I want to use. Usually I then choose Google Reader as my reader of choice when it’s a news feed or weblog feed I want to subscribe to. When it’s another type of feed (for example an audio feed called a podcast) I use a program that’s specialised for audio, like iTunes in Windows and OSx. More about podcasts in a minute.
A web browser like Mozilla Firefox has an built-in feed reader called ‘Live Bookmarks’, what it does is add a bookmark witch is dynamic. When it’s refreshed (using right mouse click) it displays the newest item. You can change the way Firefox deals with feeds by changing your preferences. Don’t know how to do that? Leave a comment or e-mail me and I can explain it.

Audio feeds or Podcasts

If I did a good job explaining you now know the basics of how a feed works and how you subscribe. What if you don’t want to subscribe to a news feed, but to an audio feed? How do you automatically download audio to take with you on your portable mp3-player? You’ll need a music player combined with a feed reader like Apple’s iTunes or the newer versions of Winamp (if you’re a Windows user). That’s a possibility. If you like your music player and don’t want to change it and also want to listen to podcasts even when your player can’t download them, you could install a pod catcher. In Windows I’ve got a pod catcher installed that’s called Winpodder. It sits in my systray and I can easily subscribe using it.
I’ve made some screen shots to show how it works. I visited http://www.nature.com and decided I wanted to subscribe to the Nature Podcast. At their front page I start hunting for clues: is there a little button or a link called ‘RSS’?

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I found something on the front page! It wasn’t an icon or a link, but I saw a ‘podcast’ section. That sounds promising, so I click on that. I get redirected to a following site which lets me choose from a host of podcasts. So predictable as I am I choose the “Neuroscience Podcast”. After doing that, I end up at the following site:

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As you see it’s self-explainable. I find a link which I copy to my computer’s clipboard using <control-c> (copy) and open my feed reader. In Winpodder I open the menu called ’subscriptions’, then I choose ‘add subscription’. The application prompts me to enter a feed. It wants me to enter the url I just copied to my clipboard. So I hit <control-v> (paste) and click “OK”. I’m now subscribed to Nature’s Neuroscience podcast. Every time the makers post a new file, I get notified. I don’t need to visit Nature’s website any more to find out about it.

I hope I explained it clearly. If someone who reads it (one of the two that visit my page ) has a question or thinks something isn’t clear, let me know. I’m always open for improvements. The neat thing about podcasts at your mp3 player is that they resume playing where you left it when you pushed ’stop’. I love it and don’t need radio talk shows any more!

Posted under Media