KartSport Magazine

The World Wide Web is a vast universe where one can find just about anything. There’s mild and wild, and everything in between. With the Internet expanding daily, how does one possibly keep up? Sure you can use your favorite search engine to locate interesting pages, but the following task of keeping up with site updates can be an exhausting practice. Wouldn’t it be nice to ’subscribe’ to the site, much like you do a newspaper or KartSport Magazine? Enter RSS.

RS What?
RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndicate’ or ‘Rich Site Summary’, depending who you ask. What’s important though, is that it allows you to ’subscribe’ to a web site and automatically be informed of content updates. So what’s that mean to you? The days of spending hours aimlessly surfing your bookmarks are long gone. RSS technology notifies you if a site has been updated, and even collates the information into summarized story snippets.

Great, so how do I subscribe to a site?
Sites who offer subscriptions broadcast a special type of web “feed.” You will need to install software in order to receive and subscribe to these feeds. These applications are referred to as ‘news aggregators,’ or ‘RSS Feed readers.’ They come in a variety of flavors and are usually free or built right into your browser.
Some popular feed readers are as follows:

Windows Operating System:
1. Pluck - http://www.pluck.com/
2. Firefox Web Browser - http://www.mozilla.com/
3. Feed Demon - http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/
4. Feed Explorer - http://www.feedexplorer.net/

5. Read RSS feeds in Microsoft Outlook:
a. NewsGator: http://www.newsgator.com/

Macintosh Operating System
1. Net News Wire - http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/
2. News Fire - http://newsfirex.com/
3. Safari 2.0 - http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/

Web Based Readers (Access your feeds though a web site instead of installing software)
1. Bloglines - http://www.bloglines.com/
2. News is Free - http://www.newsisfree.com/

Okay, picked one. Installed it. Now what?
Now that you have your software of choice, you’ll need to subscribe to a web feed. Not all web sites have feeds, so you will need to keep your eyes peeled for indications that they do. If you’re using a standardized browser such as Firefox or Safari, you will see an indication in the address bar notifying you the site is broadcasting:

(signified by the orange icon in Firefox)

(signified by the blue icon in Safari)

If you’re using Internet Explorer, you will have to keep your eyes peeled for links on the site’s actual pages. The indicators come in many shapes and sizes, a few of which are illustrated here:

If you don’t see any of these feed icons, your best bet is to scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for any links that may indicate RSS feeds.

Found some icons or links, what now?
Simply click on them. Doing so will (usually) initiate the software you installed to go through the subscription process.

If you are using Internet Explorer clicking may open up a page full of code, or even return an error. This is because Internet Explorer has not yet embraced the RSS standard. Reports on Microsoft’s web site suggest their next version of Internet Explorer (due out in a year) will indeed remedy this. In the interim, simply copy and paste the URL in the address bar and paste into the RSS application you’re using.

The KartSport Magazine Feed URL is:
http://www.kartsportmagazine.com/?feed=atom

Got it all set up, what exactly am I seeing here?

Depending what method you chose to aggregate your subscriptions, you will see something that may or may not mimic the above. By default, the RSS reader will automatically update periodically and display a list of current headlines (if any). From here, clicking on the headline will reveal more details of the story, usually in a preview pane. Double clicking the headline will usually open up the story in your default browser. (Please consult the documentation for individual software for functionality specifics).

Okay so really, why should I care about this?
RSS Web Feeds are still gaining momentum for mass adoption, but the technology is quite promising. Imagine being able to get the latest karting news on your cell phone, TV, XBOX or even your iPod. Well with RSS you can! The medium allows you to be connected and in touch with news wherever and whenever you please.