RSS will let you get Public Campaign's blog posts in a news aggregator either on your desktop or via a web service. Read more below about what RSS is, what it can do, and how you can use it.

Here is the RSS feed which contains all the latest blog posts from our site:

 

 

If you are saying, what the heck is RSS, read on:

RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a language a website can use to produce summaries of its recently updated content in a form which personal news readers and other websites can republish. RSS feeds allow users to read headlines from many different websites at once. Instead of repeatedly checking your favorite sites, you can check your news aggregator service in a web browser or through an email client. From your web-based or desktop news aggregator you will see latest headlines and teasers from feeds to which you subscribe. These headlines are linked to corresponding content on the original website that produced it.

Think of it this way – instead of going to websites to see what is new, subscribe to their feeds and receive the updates like you receive email, either to a web-based aggregator (like web mail) or a desktop aggregator (like email with an email client, but easier to setup). You can enter the link above (http://feeds.feedburner.com/paidforby) into a news aggregator to receive Public Campaign Action Fund's latest entries.

Who has RSS?

Many news websites such as Yahoo News and the BBC, and blogs or community sites offer content in syndicated format. Users browsing sites with RSS will usually see a small orange box somewhere on the website with the letters XML or RSS which indicates a feed is available.

How does this work?

News aggregators display RSS feeds, translating the signal from a selected website into a headline and additional information, like date, author, teaser, and more. An aggregator can be used on a website to republish headlines from one website to another. As an end user, a person may take advantage of desktop news aggregators like those built into Mozilla’s FireFox web browsers, in the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, or through many other stand alone desktop applications.

It’s also simple to receive RSS syndicated content right to your computer. Just plug in the address of the RSS files that you would like, such as Public Campaign Action Fund's main blog feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/paidforby, into your news aggregator. Copy this URL or another feed URL you find from the address bar of your web browser and insert it in your aggregator. Each aggregator is a little different so the setup might differ depending on the application you choose to use.

Here are some suggested news aggregators for users, both web-based and desktop based:

Web-based Aggregators:

Bloglines
My Yahoo!

Desktop Aggregators:

FeedDemon (for Windows)
NetNewsWire (for Macs)
AmphetaDesk (Windows, Mac and Linux).
Mozilla offers news aggregators in several of their open source products, including Firefox with LiveBookmarks and Thunderbird, which is also a great email client alternative to Microsoft's Outlook.