RSS Feeds and You

Just think about all of the information that you access on the Web on a day-to-day basis; news headlines, software updates, new weblog posts, and so forth.

Browsing multiple sites, searching new added information and filtering it for interesting topics is an activity that is time-consuming. One of the solutions for finding newly added content on regularly visited web sites is the use of RSS channels (feeds). Many sites and weblogs present their new information as RSS feeds. RSS feeds are ordinary XML (eXtensive Markup Language) files containing the latest news headlines, the latest updates (new pages, new software to download, etc.).

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has been around for some time now, and savvy users have come to rely on their RSS "feeds" as a way of keeping up with current events and discovering new information. But RSS is still somewhat confusing for many people, and with good reason—it's an emerging technology that's still going through massive growing pains, even as it changes the way we consume information.

What's different about RSS feeds vs. straightforward web content?
Not much, really, but one key difference is crucial: Content published in an RSS feed is typically set up to send out notifications whenever new material is available. This makes the new content immediately available to feed readers and RSS search engines. Contrast this with ordinary web pages, which are essentially passive and generally aren't accessible to most of us until search engine crawlers find and index them.

RSS feed readers allow you to subscribe to feeds that you know contain important or useful information, and your feed reader will notify you immediately whenever new content for your subscriptions is available. In short, once you've identified a useful resource that publishes an RSS feed, you can virtually skip searching for it altogether.

What is RSS?
RSS is at its core an XML file that is updated as new content is published. Using RSS Feed aggregator software you can subscribe to RSS feeds like our Hagerman & Company Newsletter, blogs like the Autodesk discussion groups, the Autodesk product knowledge bases, and news headlines from my favorite newspapers. RSS feeds allow you to get updates when new articles are published. Think of it like an active notification of new items. You can even get most RSS feed aggregating software to provide notification balloons in your system tray or desktop when something is new.

There are many free RSS Feed reading software programs out there. One popular aggregator is My Yahoo.  By clicking on the subscribe button at top right, you can add the Hagerman RSS Feed directly to your "My Yahoo" page. I use RSS feeds because they allow me to read updates to blogs, knowledge base items, and discussion group posts at blazing speeds, while also keeping me up to date with current events. It is just like skimming a newspaper for headlines of articles that may interest you.

For more detailed RSS information and answers see the the Wikipedia on RSS.

Hagerman RSS Feed
Look for the RSS feed logo on our website.  Click on it to subscribe.  The direct url for our feed is: http://newsletters.hagerman.com/Hagerman_Newsletter_RSS.xml. 

You can manually copy and paste that url into your favorite feed aggregrator. You can also subscribe by clicking on one of the buttons at the top right.

Postscript
We are also implementing RSS Feeds from Autodesk directly to our website.  So when you are on one of our Autodesk products' page, you will see the latest support news on that product from the Autodesk Knowledgebase.