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RSS Readers, Tools, and Add-Ons
You'll certainly want to subscribe to some feeds, to get an idea what they look like, and you'll want to
subscribe to your own feed, once you start it, if only to monitor it. You may also want to suggest an RSS reader
to your site visitors, to make it easy for them to sign up for your feed.
Quite a few stand alone RSS readers have cropped up recently. Several are free, and some require
a small payment. You have three style choices when subscribing to RSS feeds.
Website Based RSS
These are websites that let you monitor, subscribe to, and read RSS feeds with no special software.
Getting your own feed listed in MyYahoo! all but guarantees inclusion in the Yahoo index, too!
- Bloglines - you just sign up for a free account, search for feeds, and add them to your list to read. They also let you host a blog for free.
- My Yahoo! - also allows you to sign up for free, and monitor any feed in or out of their index. Just type in the URL and click a button to add one.
Browser Plug-In
Word is that the new versions of the major browsers will have integrated RSS readers, but that may
not happen until late in 2005, or even into 2006. In the meantime, help is at hand.
- Pluck! is a simple browser plug-in for Internet Explorer that will allow you to add and read RSS feeds as you surf. It's free.
Stand Alone RSS Readers
There are a dozen or more of these. I don't see any point in listing every one of them that I know about,
since you can only use one, and they don't differ that much, except in the "skin" they put on things. For
the sake of your bank account, I'll stick primarily to the free and lowest cost readers in my list.
- Awasu - basic edition is free, enhanced edition modestly priced.
- Feed Demon - popular, full-featured reader. Very highly rated.
- Headline Viewer - current beta release version is free.
- Newz Crawler - is free for 14 days, but then you have to pay.
- RSS Reader - a free RSS reader that is very popular.
- Sharp Reader - a "donationware" RSS reader.
RSS Software
(Create Your Own Feed)
- Feed For All - Creates your RSS feed
for you, validates your code to XML 2.0 Standard, spell checks, and much, much more. Free trial, and very modestly priced.
RSS Parsers
(add content to your website)
- CARP - Both free and low-cost versions
available, but you better know some HTML, javascript, and PHP to get it configured. Being very patient doesn't
hurt, either. I have it running on this
website. Click the links on the static index page to see the dynamic pages.
- RSS Equalizer - Very versatile and easy to use software that is well documented,
and has an active users forum. I use it on a couple of my sites.
Here's an example of it in action.
Cool RSS Utilities and Add-Ons
- RSS Ads - is a new service designed to insert text
ads into RSS feeds. Works like BlogAds and AdSense do within a blog.
- RSS AutoPublisher
- acts very much like an email autoresponder, except that it generates a sequential, personalized RSS feed for your
customer or prospect. No need to have your own RSS feed to use it.
- RSS Responder - Add personalized messages
to your RSS feed - make it work like an autoresponder to follow up with your customers, prospects, and subscribers!
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