KZIONradio

Rich Site Summary (RSS) is used for distributing news and other types of information. It may someday replace e-mail. If not everyday consumer e-mail then at least newsletters and other subscription type ezines.

There is already a movement to do just that.

Michael Fraase says, “The spammers won. Email, for anything other than communicating with individuals you already know, is useless.”

Steve Outing of Editor & Publisher says, “Who’d have thought that things could get this bad? E-mail—long touted as the “killer app” of the Internet and the best online channel for publishers—is rapidly being decimated by spammers and virus writers. Yes, “decimated” is an accurate word. The evidence is quickly mounting that e-mail is no longer an efficient means for ethical publishers to reach subscribers.”

In recent surveys, up to 38% of legit e-mail is being blocked as Spam by ISP’s, Internet spam filters and e-mail spam filters. In addition to KZION, I also run a home and visiting teaching website. I have a newsletter called Shepherds with over 7,000 subscribers. If the surveys are correct, up to 38% of my opt-in subscribers are not even receiving their copy of Shepherds. Shepherds is a double opt-in newsletter. That means the subscriber has to first sign-up, then they have to click on a link they receive via e-mail to actually get subscribed to the newsletter. I lose subscribers because the process is somewhat complicated and some people never get around to confirming their subscription.

But I have to so I can prove that I don’t send Spam.

Now I’m losing another 17-38% because of Spam filters.

With RSS you don’t receive any e-mail, instead you use an RSS reader to subscribe to a newsletter, website, or e-mail list. When the publisher publishes their newsletter, your reader delivers the newsletter to you. No e-mail, no SPAM, no complicated process to subscribe or unsubscribe, and you only receive the information that you subscribe to.

I’m going to show in this entry how to install an RSS reader and subscribe to your first RSS feed.

The first thing you need to do is download an RSS reader. Most of them are free including the one I am going to recommend. I use BlogExpress. It’s easy to use, even for a beginner.

“BlogExpress is easy to use. It is carefully designed for high usability. Information readability is one of our primary goals for building this application. Proudly, the result comes out such that you can grab information displayed in BlogExpress faster than other leading content syndication applications in the market.

“Additionally, BlogExpress has a built-in Web Tab feature in which you can use it to view any Web pages directly without leaving BlogExpress for a Web browser. This feature saves you some seconds for each link you click to view. Those seconds in a long run are hours of your time that you get back from using BlogExpress.

In sum, BlogExpress help you manage more information from the Web with less time!”

Step 1. Go here

Step 2. Look for Download – Version 1.01b. If you are using Windows XP you can just download the BlogExpress.msi and install. If you do not use Windows XP you will need to download both the Microsoft .NET Framework Redistributable 1.0 and the BlogExpress.msi.

Step 3. Install the program.

Step 4. Open Blog Express and click on the Star icon. This creates a category, lets call it LDS Blogs.

Step 5. Click on the newly created category and then click on the first icon before the star. This will create a new subscription. Enter the following into the box that opens up.

http://www.johnhesch.com/feed/

Close up the window and you’re set.

Step 5. Click on Edit and Options from the BlogExpress menu and select how often you want to check your subscriptions for updates. I have 30 minutes selected.

Now when one of your subscriptions are updated you will see it bolded. Just select it and you can read the summary in the right hand pane of the program. If you want to read the entire story or article just click on the headline and you can see the entire story.

You can also make comments directly from the reader.

It’s that simple.

Now whenever you visit a website look for links like or RSS .92, RDF 1.0, RSS 2.0. Copy those links over to your BlogExpress and you’re subscribed!

With BlogExpress you can also import an OPML file. This is basically a listing of subscribed RSS feeds. Here is mine john.opml. Download this file and import it into your BlogExpress. Go ahead, I dare you. I triple dog dare you.

For more information on RSS visit the following websites.

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/lasica/1043362624.php

http://www.llrx.com/features/rssforlibrarians.htm

http://www.faganfinder.com/search/rss.shtml