What Is RSS?

Our feeds are RSS: Really Simple Syndication, a method for subscribing to the content of a website and getting the latest updates delivered automatically.

Almost every page on this website has an RSS feed associated with it. If you subscribe to the RSS feed on the news page, you'll get the news feed. If you subscribe to the RSS feed on the music page, you'll get the music feed. Geeks call this "context-sensitive."

You can subscribe to RSS feeds using a variety of methods. Web browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Safari have built-in RSS support (Internet Explorer 7 will have it too). Standalone RSS clients like FeedDemon (Windows) and NewsMac (OS X) are another option (even Linux users have a few to choose from). Websites like Bloglines and Google Reader allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds without installing client software, which makes your RSS feed collection available across multiple computers. In other words, you've got a lot of choices.

Grabbing the Feed

On the weblog and editorial section pages, there's only one RSS feed to select. In the classifieds, click on the ad category you're interested in to see the appropriate RSS feed. In the film times, choose one of the two RSS feeds at the top of the page. Right-click (or control-click) on the icon to "Copy Link Location" and paste the RSS feed URL into your reader of choice. Firefox and Safari users (OS X 10.4 only) have it even easier.

Feeding Your Pod

Reading RSS feeds on your iPod is pretty geeky, but actually pretty useful, particularly since the Alibi classified ad feeds include the full text of the ads--not just a headline and a link back to the website--and our film times are scrupulously updated. To feed your pod, you need to use one of the many programs out there that will take an RSS feed and format it for your iPod's Notes function.

Windows · iPodAgent · Engadget's Windows How-to
Mac OS X · Pod2Go · iFeedPod · MacOSXhints How-to
Linux · CastPodder · YamiPod