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RSS Feeds

What we provide

What is RSS?

When you are on a road trip and you want to know what the traffic conditions are ahead, you turn on the car radio, tune-in to a traffic news station and listen to updates periodically. Similarly, if you want to know the status of SHARCNET systems or the latest SHARCNET news, events and workshops, you can tune to RSS feeds on your desktop computer.

The term RSS may stand for Really Simple Syndication, RDF Site Summary, or Rich Site Summary depending on the version. Written in the format of XML, RSS feeds are used by websites to syndicate their content. RSS feeds allow you to read through the news you want, at your own convenience. The messages will show up on your desktop as soon as there is an update.

Using RSS Feeds

Generally, in order to view our RSS feeds on your computer, you will first need to acquire an RSS reader or an RSS web module. There are number of RSS readers available; the following table lists currently available RSS readers for different platforms.

Windows Mac UNIX/Linux Web

You may choose any of the RSS readers you like (for example, if you are using Thunderbird as your desktop mail client, you may use its built-in RSS reader). To add a SHARCNET RSS feed (also called "channel" sometimes) that you want, copy the URL of the SHARCNET RSS feed listed at the beginning of this page and paste it into your RSS application. You will then receive notifications of your choice automatically on your computer whenever there are updates.

An alternative to downloading a dedicated news reader is to use a Web-based news reader. For example, My Yahoo! users can now add RSS feeds directly to their personal page.