News Feed
Watershed now provides news feeds so you can stay up to date with Watershed events and developments automatically.
What are News Feeds?
News feeds deliver information about what is new or has changed on a web site. Often, a news feed will include a summary of the changed infomation.
News feeds are read and displayed to the user with a software application called a news feed aggregator. Normally, this is a specialist application but sometimes a news aggregator is built into the browser.
A news aggregator application automatically alerts you to new content as soon as it is added and will display the headline along with a synopsis.
A news feed is identified by its URL, similar to the way a web page has an address. A user subscribes to a feed using the news aggregator software. Frequently there is a link on the web page that initiates the subscription process. The link is often a small orange rectangle with the word XML or RSS in it, similar the link at the base of this page.
Different Formats
As with most emerging technologies, news feeds are available in a number of different formats. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom are just two different formats of XML data. In practice, the difference between the formats is of little consequence as most news aggregator applications will subscribe to feeds of any format.
What Information is delivered through news feeds?
Watershed's news feeds contain information about the programme exhibited on the day, the most recent information added to the web site and any jobs available that day.
Registered users of Watershed's site have the ability to edit the content and format of the feed they are subscribed to.
Getting a News Aggregator
Listed below are a number of news reading applications for a variety of operating systems and some web based readers that any web browser can use. Most are free but some are commercial products.
Macintosh News Readers
NetNewsWire Lite is probably the most popular and feature laden Macintosh news aggregator. This is the free, 'lite' version. ranchero.com/netnewswire/
Pulp Fiction Lite takes a different approach to other news readers and has a similar interface to Apple's Mail. Again, this is the free, 'lite' version. www.freshlysqueezedsoftware.com
NewsFire is an elegant solution and a very 'Macintosh like' application. NewsFire is a commercial application. www.newsfirerss.com
Windows News Readers
FeedDemon is probably the most popular news aggregator for Windows and includes features for podcasting and del.icio.us. www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon
Feedreader is a lightweight opensource aggregator that supports RSS and Atom formats. It works under Windows 95 and later versions. www.feedreader.com
Linux News Reader
Straw is a desktop news aggregator for the GNOME environment. Its aim is to be a faster, easier and more accessible way to read news and weblog. www.nongnu.org/straw
RSS Feed
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