If you haven't heard about RSS or Atom feeds don't feel bad. I just started using
them about 4 months ago myself. Still, you can take a step right now to take your web
surfing to the next level.
Perhaps you have heard of Blogs or Weblogs as they are properly called. These
gems of the web started out and still continue today as diaries or journals put up on the
net by those that just like to write and share their everyday world with the outside. These,
still at this time, June, 2005, are still the largest part of blogging on the world wide web.
You can find these very easily by going to Google or Yahoo and typing in a subject
followed by the word blog. For example, I just typed in Tornado Blogs into a Google
search box and got 150 different blogs about tornadoes.
With that kind of exposure you can find blogs on any subject on earth. The great
thing about this is that after you decide which blogs are your favorite you can put them in
your favorites, bookmarked or otherwise presented on you desktop. The great thing is that
many, including myself, have gone to the next level and have turned their blogs into RSS
Feeds. A very simple process if you use Blogger.com
If RSS is the same as blogs then what's all this blog stuff? Let me explain, Blogs
and RSS feeds are not quite the same. In short, the blogging idea was picked up and many
major news sources like Fox and CNN and on and on started putting their own blogs out
in the form of newfeeds. Simply RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. And we as
end users can gain access to the latest news about anything including weather on our
desktops.
Yet, doing this is a mystery to so many that I decided to put this report on the
website so that you could gain instant access to newsfeeds and hopefully my own
TipsOnTornadoes blog and RSS feeds. Now, you should understand that newfeeds are
similar to HTML and require a special piece of software that allows you to read the feed.
The computer language is similar to HTML on a web page but not really the same. To
read a feed we need a "reader". There are many "readers" available for free online.
The one that I use is Feedreader, available at Feedreader.com. The download is
free. It is simple to download and easy to use. It has a great feature that helps me out a
great deal. That feature is a little balloon that rises up off your task bar when one of your
favorite feeds has just uploaded a new article for you to read. The significance of this will
become apparent in a moment.
I wrote this article for my subscribers to enjoy my tornado blogs as well as any
other content they can subscribe to. Every time I upload a new blog to my RSS feed you
can receive the notice that something new is available. And let me say, I update a great
deal with stories from all over the globe which relate to weather. While I would like to
think that you would love to see my feeds show up on your desktop every time I upload
one, I'm not that naive.
The real beauty of this feature, for those interested in weather, occurs when you
subscribe to a NOAA feed for your state. You see as the NWS issues alerts for your state
the Feedreader window will pop up and you can take a look to see if your exact area is
going to be effected by the weather that is maturing. How cool is that? It's like a Weather
Alert radio on your computer.
These feeds are not exactly easy to find. The NOAA feeds for your state come in
this format http://www.nws.noaa.gov/alerts/co.rss where "co" is the state of Colorado or
the two-letter postal identifier for your state. So, all you have to do is copy this link into
your feedreader and change the co (in this link) to the two-letter identifier for your own
state.
As you may expect that there are search engines for RSS feeds. They work similar
to Yahoo, MSN, Google and others. The trouble is finding them. So here are a few for
you to peruse and choose your favorite(s). My favorite is Feedster.com.
Chorda