A c t i o n f o r L i b r a r i e s — J u l y 2 0 0 3

The Internet Connection

By Michael Sauers

Read RSS Feeds in Outlook
If you've not yet addicted yourself to reading RSS (Rich Site Summary) feeds daily - if not hourly - you're missing out on a significant information resource. RSS is an XML-based format that allows a Web developer to create a data feed of headlines, links and article summaries from a Web site. Many weblogs and some news sites syndicate their content in RSS format to which readers then subscribe.

I've been subscribing to a few RSS feeds, but hadn't been completely addicted since using RSS requires installing yet another piece of software for my computer to have running in the background. With NewsGator, www.newsgator.com/, that problem has been solved.

For only $29 NewsGator, a news aggregator, gives you access to your subscribed RSS feeds from within Microsoft Outlook. Once the software is installed, individual feeds are treated just like mail folders, and news items are treated just like e-mail messages.

Additionally, NewsGator gives you the ability to right-click on a feed link in a Web page and choose Subscribe in NewsGator, giving you the ability to subscribe to a feed without having to bring up another program or copy-and-paste the address of the feed.

As an added bonus, NewsGator provides additional plug-ins for those of you who blog. If you use any one of several common blogging platforms, such as BlogSpot, Radio or MoveableType, you can add the ability to create a new post or generate a post from a received e-mail message directly into your blog without leaving Outlook.

Although NewsGator is technically another piece of software installed on my computer, it doesn't seem like separate software since it integrates perfectly into Outlook. Now that I can get all of my e-mail and RSS feeds in one program, I just need to find more time to read it all.

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