What is RSS?  

You may have noticed this icon, or 'chiclet' on our site and other sites. RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication,' and is a way to have frequently updated content (like a list of domains) delivered straight to your computer in the form of RSS feeds. It can save you time by having the items come to you rather than you having to visit multiple sites to find what you're looking for. In short, it's a news wire delivered directly to you.

 

How does it work?

In order to use RSS feeds, you will need to first get something called an RSS reader or news aggregator. This program allows you to perform some very important functions:

• Choose which RSS feeds you'd like to receive
• Retrieve RSS feeds from the Internet automatically
• Provide you with a place to read RSS feeds

You can subscribe to the SPOT Healthcare feed to receive the domain list in real time.

 

Listed below are some free readers and aggregators that can be used to access the SPOT Healthcare RSS Feed (these products are not affiliated with KnowledgeStorm or SPOT Healthcare):

Bloglines
A popular Web-based reader.

My Yahoo
A Web-based aggregator.

Pluck
Free plug-in for Internet Explorer 6.0 and above.

NewsGator
Offers both a stand-alone RSS application and a Web-based aggregator.

Mozilla Firefox
A Web browser with built in RSS capabilities it accesses individual feeds as "live" bookmarks.

 

I have my RSS reader. Now what?

To receive a specific blog from our site via RSS, simply click on the RSS 'chiclet' associated with it.  A page will open with code in it, but don't worry, you don't have to read it and you didn't make a mistake. To subscribe to the RSS feed, simply copy the URL for the page and subscribe to it in your RSS reader. Ways to subscribe may include dragging the URL of the RSS feed into your reader or cutting and pasting the URL into your reader. Once set up, your reader will automatically pull the content in and display it on your computer for you.

 

What does an RSS feed look like?

RSS is based on XML, a widely used standard for textual information exchange between applications on the Internet. RSS feeds can be viewed as plain text files, but they're really designed for computer-to-computer communication.

An RSS feed will be formatted as XML and has two distinct sections. The first section contains the basic information about the feed (the channel), such as the title, link, description, and (optional) language. The second section contains information on each specific piece of content being included (items). The way the feed looks depends on the version of RSS being used. FindTech Blogs uses RSS version 2.0.

Below is an example of an RSS feed, based on a SPOT Healthcare search.

<rss version="2.0"> -- Indicates that this is an RSS 2.0 feed.

      <channel>     -- The channel is the element that holds items. 

                  -- It also contains information about the collection of items.

         <title>SPOT Healthcare</title>

            <item> -- A container for a story, blog entry, or article.

               <title>CTSNet Newsletter</title>

               <link>

                  http://www.ctsnet.org/sections/aboutctsnet/newsletter/mar2006_newsletter.html

               </link>

               <description>

<b> ... </b>manufacturer and marketer of state-of-the-art <b>cardiac</b> <b>

surgery</b><b>products</b> and services, announced a definitive agreement under which ATS will acquire<b> 
... </b>the United States the cryosurgical systems are indicated for minimally invasive <b>cardiac</b> surgical 
procedures, including the treatment of <b>cardiac</b> arrhythmias, 510(k) cleared. MEDTRONIC <b>cardiac</b> 

<b>surgery</b><b> ... </b>

               </description>

         </item>

   </channel>

</rss>