RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) allows you to get regular news from eRobertParker.com without having to visit the site.

Originally getting RSS involved installing a special "reader program". While they still exist, the most recent data we've seen indicates that most people get RSS via a web page. The most popular approaches are a personalized My Yahoo or iGoogle home page. Of the other options Bloglines is the most popular. A third option is the RSS reader that is built into Outlook 2007. A lot of information about the available reader options is available here.

No matter which option you choose, you can subscribe to any of thousands of sites (like the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal or Sports Illustrated). There are sites that index sources of RSS feeds including syndic8 and NewsIsFree. Many sites will post an icon (usually, ) to indicate that they offer a feed, but there is no real convention so you may need to look around to find the RSS link. Our own page uses our red circular icons as the links. The first four such icons include the phrase "XML" to indicate that you should right-click on them to subscribe, as explained in the fourth paragraph. Alternately, you can subscribe to our feeds by right-clicking on the icons at the bottom of this page, again as explained in the fourth paragraph.

Each subscription can be thought of as a "channel". Simply add the channels you want to a My Yahoo or iGoogle home page, for example, and you've in essence built your own personalized newspaper.

If you want to see more, click on a link and you're transported directly to the source's web site. In this way, you can easily check for new information on many, many web sites without having to visit each one separately in your web browser. You need only visit those web sites that have new information that interests you.

To subscribe to a channel right-click on the icon (or whatever the site has posted) and select "Copy Shortcut" or "Copy Link Location" to copy the location (URL) of the service. Follow the instructions for your particular news reader, and then paste this location wherever it asks for the location of the service you want. Your news reader may come pre-subscribed to some channels but you can always unsubscribe if you don't want them.

Most news readers can periodically poll the RSS feeds for new items to save you the trouble of checking over and over again for new information. Many readers can also alert you (by displaying a "pop-up" message, playing a sound, etc.) when new information is available so you will know immediately when something new has arrived.

eRobertParker.com has added the following RSS feeds (or channels) so that you can be kept right up to date with new information available on the site and on our bulletin board:

For more information on RSS feeds, please see News That Comes to You, by J.D. Lasica.