Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

I first found out about Really Simple Syndication from an e-mail newsletter article by Kamau Austin. I was automatically subscribed to this newsletter when I signed up with some different advertising networks. They all run together in a blur now, and I don?Äôt remember the name of the one that actually transferred that baggage to me, but I have actually found it useful in some ways. That was when I was previously another kind of virgin, tangled in the complicated net of advertising on the World Wide Web. But that?Äôs another story.

The newsletter was Site Pro News. I discovered that there is yet another whole world out there that I knew nothing about. But there were several points about the idea of web syndication, that appealed to my independent and free-spirited nature. Really I was originally attracted to Web publishing about ten years ago, because of the Freedom of Expression that could not be compared to any other medium. At that time just publishing a website was still new and different for me. But that?Äôs another story.

I?Äôm not going to impress you with any statistics here, but I?Äôm sure that since the early nineties, the number of websites that are potentially useful and interesting to you or me has increased exponentially, beyond what is possible to document. That?Äôs great, but you can spend a lot of time searching for compatible sites, losing their addresses, sometimes working with dysfunctional spiders, and tolerating information that is repeated over and over again, to find what you?Äôre looking for. For us, the people who publish this website we call Listen & Be Heard Weekly, the best thing about syndicating our articles and columns, is that we can give people exactly what they?Äôre looking for. The best thing about Really Simple Syndication is that you can now be the editor of a newspaper that only publishes articles that you want to read, from a wide variety of sources chosen by you.

That sounds good doesn?Äôt it? So I thought, ?Äúthat?Äôs worth looking into,?Äù and I started visiting some of the links in the article, and looking up the numerous terms I didn?Äôt actually understand, that techspeak, that goes over my head and makes me feel inadequate. But I didn?Äôt give up, and I?Äôm here to testify that you too will want to let RSS into your life. For those who will read no further than the next line or two, you can just take note that I?Äôve made some of this so easy for you that you really don?Äôt have to do anything.

Now if you made it this far, and you really do want to be the editor of your own world wide newspaper, then you need to have a browser that will read xml files, or you need to download one of many free newsreaders available on-line. You?Äôll find the addresses to a few in the sidebar on the right of this article. I use the Safari browser that came with Mac OSX. I like being able to use my browser because I already use it, and life is complicated enough already. But you don?Äôt have to have the most popular operating system, or prettiest computer. There is a newsreader for you, because Really Simple Syndication is really simple, once you find what you?Äôre looking for, that is. Once you have the right software for you, then you have to find the authors that you want writing for you.

For me, the biggest obstacle is the search for the unique qualities that I am looking for. It can take hours, days even, to find the writers and sites you?Äôre looking for. But once you find the newsfeeds that you want, you just add them to your list, and then, whenever there is a new article, a summary of the article and a link to the full content on the site on which it?Äôs published, will be displayed for you. That saves you a lot of foreplay and allows you to spend more time with what really interests you.

There are numerous feeds available on numerous subjects. You can now sign up for some of our columns individually, or for one feed with links to all the new articles, columns and art on our site each week. Click here to see our master RSS feedlist.

You could just make us your homepage, and never search for a newsfeed yourself. Or you can be bold, and go ahead and enter some search criterion, and see what fish are in the sea waiting for you to find them. I hope this little discussion has been helpful to you. Now you must find out for yourself what the mystery is all about.

Wishing you Success in your Pursuit.

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