News feeds –quick start guide

Contents• Using news feeds• Portal subscriptions• Subscriptions – instructions for users• Setting news feeds up in Outlook• Setting news feeds up in your browser• News readers – eg iGoogle

Using news feeds (RSS)

What are news feeds (RSS)? RSS (Rich Site Summary – often called Really Simple Syndication) gives you a list of all the

updates that sites you’ve signed up to have made. This could be information on new products, newsletters, changes to previous information or release dates – anything they think will be interesting to you, based on your preferences.

Why news feeds? If you use lots of sites regularly, then newsfeeds save you the time and hassle of visiting them

regularly to find out what’s changed. And unlike signing up for newsletters, you don’t have to give away your personal information.

How can I automatically get updated content? Just subscribe to a newsfeed. Once set up, Outlook or Internet Explorer will automatically

download the most up-to-date web feed list.

Openreach portalSubscriptions – instructions for users

Using Outlook, web browsers and news readers Our site generates a news feed, which you can sign up to by pressing this logo, found

in the top right corner of the page This feed will then automatically update your newsreader (including some email programs) with any new posts on the site.

Most modern browsers, including Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari and Chrome automatically check for feeds when you visit a website, and display the orange RSS icon when they find one. Many of them allow you to add RSS feeds as a browser favourite or bookmark folder, automatically updating them with the latest content.

You can also set-up your RSS feeds in Outlook.

OutlookNews feeds – instructions on how to set them up Outlook

Setting up news feeds in Outlook – from the Openreach website Go the page you want to subscribe to Right click on the RSS icon Select Copy Shortcut

Setting up news feeds in Outlook

Right click on the RSS Feeds folder in Outlook.

Select Add a New RSS Feed

Setting up news feeds in Outlook

Place your cursor in the address bar of the pop-up, then Ctrl V and click on Add

Setting up news feeds in Outlook

Next click on Advanced

Setting up news feeds in Outlook

Add in the folder details - ie what you want to call it and where you want it to store it –then click on OK.

BrowsersSubscriptions – instructions on how to set them up in a browser window

Setting up an Openreach news feed in your browser

1. Go to the page which holds the information that you want to subscribe to2. Click on the RSS icon

You can add it to your favourites in your browser

Select Subscribe to this feed to add it to your browser favourites.

Click on the favourites icon to view your feeds

Viewing your feeds

News readers

Using news readers

Most news readers collect news in the background at timed intervals set by you. When a new item is available, you can click on the headline to see a short description of the item and click or open this to get the full story in a new window.

News readers and news aggregators - Where to find them

The most popular ones are: Newzcrawler, AmphetaDesk, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, NewsGator, Newsmonster, and Radio Userland.

Here are a few RSS feed readers that are free:Google reader, My Yahoo, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 has an RSS reader built into the browser.

If you want to know more about RSS and news readers, here is what Wikipedia has to say about it.