iMonk | January 2006

Soquel, California — Monday, January 30th

Add iMonk to My Yahoo!

This week the iMonk web site begins publishing an RSS/XML feed with the headlines and the first paragraph of all the iMonk blog entries for the last month. This will allow you to add a summary of the iMonk blog to a personalized news page like My Yahoo! or an online RSS aggregator like BlogLines.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is written in XML (eXtensible Markup Language) so the raw code is not very informative when viewed directly (unless you're very geeky), but it does make it easier to subscribe to a web site, and it is an increasingly popular way to keep up-to-date with the content of your favorite weblogs, major newspapers, or magazines.

In fact, if you have set up a personalized news page on web sites such as My Yahoo!, Google, My AOL, or My MSN, you are already utilizing RSS feeds whether you know it or not. These customized news pages — and online RSS aggregators like BlogLines and NewsGator — "feed" users information every time a selected weblog or regular news source is updated.

While most people receive alerts from their favorite web sites through email, RSS feeds have the advantage of being spam-free (since you do not have to give out your email address) and if you later change your mind about a particular subscription, it takes just a couple of clicks to unsubscribe.

Online services like My Yahoo! and BlogLines get the latest updates from the web sites that you subscribe to (weblogs, online newspapers, magazines) and display them on one convenient, customized web page. With Really Simple Syndication you don't have to visit each web site individually to see what's new — you simply scan the headlines and/or summaries and click to read the full text of the articles that interest you. It's really quite simple!

The iMonk home page has one-click subscription icons for the popular My Yahoo! personalized web page and the free BlogLines online RSS aggregator. The Subscribe via RSS link has more subscription options for My MSN, My AOL, Google and NewsGator, detailed instructions on how to subscribe to these specific services, and other useful advice.

Please also see the What is RSS? page for more information about RSS/XML.

URL: http://www.imonk.net/06/january4.html
Layout by iMonk — January 30th, 2006.