RSS feed added

[kman]

If you look at the top right side of the screen underneath the site's slogan, you'll see a bunch of buttons for FAQ, Search, etc. I just added a new one called "RSS".

If you're already familiar with RSS and news aggregation/syndication, then woohoo!...this is the button you've been waiting for. If you're not familiar with these things, read on...

Here's a good explanation of what RSS is:
(source here)

RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.

RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the weblogging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favorite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.

I use to do a lot of surfing of web sites to check up on my favorite news sources, blogs, info sites, etc. But over the past couple of weeks, I've slowly but surely converted almost all of web surfing habits into just launching my news aggregator program and letting it suck in all the updated news from the Internet. Then I can just browse the links in my feed reader. If I see a particular entry I want more info on, I can click on it and its website will open up in my browser.

So what this new button does is subscribe you to an RSS feed that sends out all the new messages posted to the MREInfo forums. Some of you maybe already get something similar when you check "Notify me when a reply is posted" when posting a message. But the RSS feed doesn't care about which messages you mark for tracking - it just sends them all (but not via email, don't worry about your mail box getting flooded).

Some browsers have RSS readers built into them. The best way to check to see if yours works is to click the RSS button at the top of this page and see what your browser does. If its says "Do you want to subscribe to this feed?" then you're set. If it barfs on you and says "What the heck is this?" then you'll need an external reader.

Here's the one I'm using now. It's free and seems to work great:

Greatnews (Windows only)
http://www.curiostudio.com/

There are also web sites that be used as news aggregators - sites such as http://www.bloglines.com . But me personally, I like the flexibility of the external programs.

Here's more info in case you're interested:

Wikipedia entry for RSS
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)
(you have to copy and paste that URL yourself - the forum isn't linking it up automatically)

Wikipedia list of news aggregators
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_aggregators

[DIRTYDAVE]

Too much technology. I just bought my first Mac and a new recording setup for my music...too much...too much information and technology.

I imagine the rest of you are like me, you end up spending more time on the phone with tech support, reading manuals, going to product stores, and watching video how to's and less time doing what you should...enjoying your product or creating, whether it be music, art or just printing out some pictures.

ARRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!