What is RSS?

RSS saves people from having to repeatedly visit favourite websites to check for new content or be notified of updates via email. It’s an alternative for “lazy” people or those swamped by email, who still want to stay informed but not overwhelmed by information.
RSS feeds can be used to build websites for example! The http://www.global-unions.org website is almost exclusively made of RSS feeds. The site pulls in news from all Global Union websites, including UNI’s, automatically and displays the news on its homepage.
Also check: http://www.laborgeek.org a site that studies the RSS feeds of blogs that specialise in union ICT issues, and merges all their posts automatically into one feed, so you only need to remember one place for all the news.

RSS stands for “Remote Site Summary” and also for “Really Simple Syndication”.
RSS often provides NEWS items containing short descriptions of web content, together with a link to the full version of the content. This information is delivered as an XML* file called RSS feed, RSS stream or RSS channel.
An orange box with the letters XML or RSS is often the link to a site’s RSS feed. /

RSS feeds today, are mainly used by weblogs or News websites, which is why, since 2004-2005, all major news websites such as BBC, FT, Reuters, Associated Press etc, offer feeds to their website visitors. UNI started offering them in July 2005.

How can I use RSS feeds?
You may find an interest in pulling together RSS feeds on your computer so you don’t have to visit all of your favourite news websites separately everyday. Or you are interested in building an RSS feed for your own website so you can distribute news to your readers automatically too.
Let’s first look at how you get your RSS feeds to your computer. You can use Live Bookmarks in your internet browser or get feeds into your email system. Alternatively you can install a FEED READER on your computer.
Installing a feed reader:
The separate program is called a “Feed Reader” or “Aggregator”. It checks RSS-enabled websites on your behalf, and displays any updated article it finds. There are several but you can start by trying FeedReader or RSSReader and see which one you like best.
To install it on your computer, type “FeedReader” or “RSSReader” in Google, find their websites and download the setup file.
Once it’s installed, you should have an icon on your desktop called “FeedReader” or “RSSReader”.
You now need to find your feeds:

1. Go to your favourite website and look for an orange button such as these: / .
2. Click on the button and copy the URL (website address), and then paste it into your feed reader.
3. The feed will be added to your list and in a few minutes or even seconds it will start pulling in all of the latest news from the selected site.
4. If you don’t know where to start, you can look for news you’re interested in with a feed search engine, such as: www.feedster.com, www.technocrati.com, www.plazoo.com

Open FeedReader when you start your computer everyday.
When news is published on the websites you have feeds for, a popup window, like this one will show at the bottom right of your computer’s screen:

It disappears a few seconds later and if you want to actually read the news, go back to FeedReader and double-click on the headline of interest.
Easy!

If your website doesn’t offer RSS feeds yet, you should see with your techie if he or she can set it up for you. Don’t hesitate to contact UNI for assistance!

What’s in RSS for unions?
Offering RSS feeds on your website is a huge service to your members who may not think of visiting your website for news everyday or hesitate to subscribe to your news email service, afraid of getting too many emails they won’t have time to read.
Take the time to inform your members and train them to use RSS feeds!

How does UNI use RSS?
UNI offers a large number of RSS feeds to its website visitors, so they have a choice of languages, themes, sectors or regions they are interested in.

We hope to one day build a page similar to the Global Unions’ website where we can pull in all of our affiliates’ news into one site automatically. In one glance, you’d find news from all of our 900 affiliated unions which we can then break down by language and region.
So, let us know if your website offers RSS feeds so we can start including them!

More help:

• Contact me: webmaster[a]uniglobalunion.org
• Visit: http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english (in English) – really worth having a look!