April 5, 2010, 7:23 a.m.
posted by neverloop
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!
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 to My Yahoo! is being able to find the RSS feeds you care about. The key to the process is finding the feed URL so you can copy and paste it into a form at My Yahoo!. Like an address on a house, a feed URL tells services like My Yahoo! where to find updated information. Here are some tips for spotting feed URLs.
Go to the source.
The first place to look for feed URLs is at your favorite web sites. Most sites that offer an RSS feed will have an orange image with white letters that say "XML" or "Finding RSS Feeds." Figure shows a number of variations you might see on the front page of a web site.
Variations on the white-on-orange XML theme
Nine times out of ten, this image will link to site's feed URL
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To copy the feed URL, right-click the icon and choose Copy Link Location (or Copy Shortcut in Internet Explorer) from the menu. At this point, the feed URL will be available on your virtual clipboard, ready to paste into My Yahoo!
Look for auto-discovery.
Even sites that don't include an orange-and-white XML icon might leave clues about the RSS feed URL in their source HTML. To solve the problem of finding feeds, a standard called RSS auto-discovery has emerged. Sites that want to make it easy for people to find their feed URL can include a special HTML tag in the source of their pages to let applications such as web browsers find their feed URL. Once browsers are "aware" of auto-discovery and looking for the auto-discovery tag, they can let the user know when they've spotted an RSS feed URL in a web page. Firefox lets users know by displaying an orange icon in the lower-right corner of the browser window, as shown in Figure.
Even though SFgate.com doesn't have an orange XML icon or a link to its RSS feed on the home page, once you spot this orange RSS feed indicator, you can use Firefox's View Source feature to find the auto-discovery HTML tag that holds the feed URL. To view the source of any web page, choose View 
Page Source from the browser's top menu. Finding the tag can be tricky, but it is always located toward the top of the HTML page, between the opening <head> and closing </head> tags. For example, the SFGate.com page in Figure has the following auto-discovery tag in its HTML source:
<link href="http://www.sfgate.com/rss/feeds/news.xml" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="SFGate: Top News Stories" />
Note the URL contained in the HRef element. This is the site's RSS feed URL, ready for copying and pasting into My Yahoo!.
Like Firefox, the Yahoo! Toolbar is also smart enough to recognize this tag in pages you visit. If you have the toolbar installed and browse a site with the RSS auto-discovery tag, you'll find that a blue "Add to My Yahoo!" button with a plus signlike the one shown in Figurewill appear on the toolbar.
Instead of rooting around in a site's HTML to find the URL, you'll be able to simply click the button to add the site to your list of news sources.
Firefox with the orange RSS feed indicator in the lower-right corner
The Yahoo! toolbar with a blue "Add to My Yahoo!" button
Adding to My Yahoo!
Once you have the feed URL of the news source copied to your virtual clipboard, head to My Yahoo! and log in. From there, click the Add Content link toward the top of the page. On the Add Content page, click the "Add RSS by URL" link shown in Figure.
The RSS Add page contains a single form field, where you can paste the feed URL you've been saving in your clipboard with Ctrl-V. Clicking Add will let you preview the feed so that you can make sure it's what you want. Figure shows the SFGate.com feed preview.
If you compare the preview in Figure with the web page in Figure, you'll see that the headlines are the same. And finally, the Add button with the blue plus sign will finish the work of adding the feed. From that point on, you'll find the news source on your My Yahoo! page, as shown in Figure.
"Add RSS by URL" link at My Yahoo!
SFGate.com RSS feed preview at My Yahoo!
SFGate.com in My Yahoo!
Now that you know the complex way to add outside sources to My Yahoo!, you'll be happy to know there's an easier way. The entire copy and paste process can be shortened to one click at sites that support the "Add to My Yahoo!" button shown in Figure.
The "Add to My Yahoo!" button found at some sites
Not every site with an RSS feed includes the "Add to My Yahoo!" button, but as RSS feeds become more and more popularand as My Yahoo! becomes known as a place to consume RSSyou might see it popping up at more of the sites you visit. When you spot one, click it, and you'll go directly to the preview page for that feed at My Yahoo!
Taking the time to add your favorite sites to My Yahoo! will let you keep up with many more sites than you'd be able to by visiting each site individually. Not only will you be reading information that's more relevant to you, you'll be reading it more efficientlywhen it's updated, and alongside the rest of your favorites.
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