Track Your Favorite Sites with RSS

One of the most powerful features of My Yahoo! allows you to add RSS feeds from any online information source.

My Yahoo! offers easy access to national and international news. With a few clicks, you can add the top headlines from national news services, such as Reuters, the Associated Press, or USA Today. But the real power of My Yahoo! is not only that it gives you access to these great sources, but also that it lets you add any news source to your daily read. The key to this flexibility is My Yahoo!’s ability to read RSS.

Editing theme colors at My Yahoo!

Figure 2-33. Editing theme colors at My Yahoo!

RSS stands for “really simple syndication” or “rich site summary,” depending on who you ask. What’s important is that RSS is a standard XML format for sharing headlines and news summaries across web sites. Just as a web page is formatted for display in a web browser, RSS feeds are formatted for display in newsreaders like My Yahoo!.

Everyone from an individual in his basement writing a weblog to a large media giant like the New York Times can publish RSS to be used with services such as My Yahoo! Knowing this allows you to bring in more news sources than the standard choices Yahoo! provides automatically.

Finding RSS Feeds

Keep in mind that not every news source out there has an RSS feed. And those that do don’t always make the RSS feed easy to find. Part of the skill of adding content ...

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