RSS and CQ.sk: you will never miss an article again!

Why and why RSS? And how to use it?

The value of information is often determined by its timeliness. Circulating a lot of pages and tracking, whether something new has been added to them is demanding not only on time, but also on finances. That is why CQ.sk, as the first amateur radio site in our region, brings RSS.

Professional, RSS allows you to find out in time what article has been added to the page, even with suitable software equipment to read it as in a browser.

How to do it? There are several programs for working with RSS. FeedReader can serve as an example, which detects at regular intervals, what has changed on the monitored pages. For example, when an article is added to CQ.sk, a box with the title of the article will appear in the lower right corner of your computer screen.

You can even read it directly in the FeedRead window, because it also works as an internet browser. That's enough for a preview, but it is not luxury. It is better to open a classic internet browser (IE, Netscape, Opera, Konqueror a i.) and visit the site.

You can download FeedReader from the site http://www.feedreader.com (approx. 1,3MB). The installation was quick and trouble-free for me.

The program needs to be defined, which pages to follow. For this you need to know the address of the XML file. You can get it directly from pages with a prominent RSS logo. Na to, to get it from us, you must be a registered visitor.

Click the NEW button in Feed Read, which will open the New feed wizard window. It expects the mentioned address, which must be written or copied there. After pressing the Next button, the program verifies the address. If there is actually an XML file on it, it will also offer you a predefined page name. If it suits you, just put Finish.

Press F5 to load the data from the page. In the upper right corner of the window, you can see the headlines of the articles. If you want to read it in FeedRead, just double click on it.

FeedReader does not need to be configured further, but it's good to know, that you have such an option. All program settings are hidden under Properties, while the most interesting ones are in General, where to set up, starting the program, its options and what it will display and what it won't. There are two important settings in Appearance: how often FeedReader should check, whether something has been added to the page and how the information about the new article will be displayed.

But what RSS cannot do? Above all, it must be said, that it obtains data only about part of the page - about articles. However, a lot of information is also displayed in a different way, for example in blocks or are only accessible via the menu.

European HAM Portal CQ.sk is of course not the only site, which uses RSS. www.11m.sk can also serve as an example, which is probably the most related thematically.