Overworked advocates for low-income people often struggle with information overload. What if you could collect news stories and information from newspapers, website, blogs, and other sources in one place and browse through them at your convenience? What if you could organize news of specific interest to you in your practice, easily retrieve categorize, store, and retrieve stories, and email relevant information to your friends and colleagues? Really simple syndication, or RSS, offers advocates the ability to do all of these things easily and inexpensively.

RSS is a format for syndicating news and other news-like content, such as online newsletters, blogs, recent case filings, etc. It is really a technology enabling content providers to “feed” their content to users, much as a news feed such as AP or Reuters “feeds” news to media outlets. Websites interested in syndicating their content provide it in RSS format; users can “consume” the RSS feed in one of several ways. (For links to RSS feeds of interest to legal services advocates, see the accompanying article.)

Using a Web Browser to Read RSS Feeds

Many popular web browsers offer tools that enable users to read RSS feeds. For example, Mozilla Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/) includes a tool called Live Bookmarks, a special kind of bookmark that acts as a folder to contain the links in an RSS feed.

To add a Live Bookmark in Firefox, navigate to a webpage that offers an RSS feed, for example, CNN’s law page, http://www.cnn.com/LAW/. Click the Live Bookmark icon (orange square with white “radio waves” moving from left to right) in the address bar in Firefox. The Add Live Bookmark dialog box will appear; create your new Live Bookmark in your Bookmarks folder. Now, open your Bookmarks; there should be a bookmark listed for the item you just selected, with the Live Bookmark icon designation to the left of the new item. Move your cursor over your new bookmark, and a series of headlines for “stories” will appear that you can choose to open in tabs or separately. These stories are automatically updated throughout the day as CNN’s website is updated.

For a screencast demonstration on how to add a live bookmark in Firefox, click here.

Other web browsers that support RSS news feeds include Opera, http://www.opera.com/, and Safari for the Mac, http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/. The next version of Internet Explorer, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx#ie7rss, which is currently in beta testing, will support RSS feeds as well.

RSS capability is also built in to some email software. The latest version of Thunderbird, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, the email client developed by Mozilla, includes a News and Blogs tab that can be used to subscribe to RSS feeds. Microsoft’s newest version of Outlook, which will be available as part of Office 2007, will include this capability as well.

Using a Desktop News Aggregator to Read RSS Feeds

An alternative method of using RSS is to download and install a desktop news aggregator.

One of the more popular desktop applications for RSS is Feedreader, www.feedreader.com. Feedreader is a free, open source application that works on Windows-based PCs. The user interface is simple and straightforward. Three panels present (1) a categorized list of feeds to which the user is subscribed; (2) a list of headlines for the articles available from the various feeds; and (3) the partial or full text of the selected article, along with links to the underlying website. Headlines can be grouped by source, date, or category. Moreover, Feedreader enables you to create “smartfeeds” that aggregate feeds to which you have subscribed that meet certain rules, e.g., all news stories that contain the words “public housing” in the body of the article. Feedreader can be set to run in the background and automatically notify you when new stories arrive.

For a screencast demonstration on how to use Feedreader to view newsfeeds, click here.

Other popular software applications for aggregating RSS content include FeedDemon, http://www.newsgator.com/NGOLProduct.aspx?ProdID=FeedDemon, and RSSReader, http://www.rssreader.com/rssreader.htm.

Using an Online News Aggregator to Read News Feeds

Several online services are available to aggregate RSS newsfeeds. An advantage of using an online news aggregator, rather than desktop software, is that your news headlines can be available to you on any computer connected to the Internet.

Google’s free service, Google Reader, http://www.google.com/reader, is a fast, easy way to get started with RSS. You must have a (free) Google account (http://www.google.com/support/accounts/) to use Google Reader.

Google Reader presents users with a simple, two-panel interface showing (1) headlines in your news stories and (2) the full-text or summary of the underlying story. A search box at the top of the page enables users to search for new content and news feeds of interest. Stories can be sorted by date or by automatic sorting, which prioritizes items based on their importance to the user. Users can also assign labels or categories to their RSS subscriptions and choose to view only stories from a particular category. A “star” can be assigned to individual news stories of particular interest.

Google Reader’s sharing feature lets users share news items with friends via email or by publishing them to a blog. Users can also choose to put a clip of the latest headlines from a label within Google Reader on a website or blog.

For a screencast on how to use Google Reader, click here.

Finding Relevant RSS News Feeds

Once you have determined that you would like to try RSS, how do you find relevant news feeds. Read the next article in this series for a list of sources for poverty law-related RSS feeds.