RSS Feeds from EpistemeLinks

EpistemeLinks currently provides the following RSS Feeds:

• What's New at EpistemeLinks RSS Feed - This feed provides brief descriptions of the new features at the site (the same brief descriptions that appear at the top of the What's New? page at the site).
• Philosophy Events Calendar RSS Feed - This feed provides information on upcoming philosophy events, as they are added to the Events Calendar at the site. In this way, the RSS feed serves as a timely philosophy conferences announcement resource.
• Philosophy Job Listings RSS Feed - This feed provides the data from the Job Listings section at EpistemeLinks. As new jobs are added to the database, they will appear in this RSS feed, making it easy for anyone interested to stay current on the latest job openings.

What is an RSS Feed?

The acronym RSS can stand for Really Simple Syndication or RDF Site Summary, but in either case it amounts to an XML file that provides timely information from a website that contains article headlines, summaries, blog writings, announcements, and so on. Sometimes the RSS feed provides only a summary of longer articles, but if the content is short the RSS feed can provide the entire item. RSS feeds at EpistemeLinks do not link to longer articles, as they provide the complete announcement content that is available.

What Are the Benefits of Using RSS?
RSS is an easy way for you to be alerted when content that interests you appears on your favorite websites. Instead of having to visit a particular website to browse for new articles, annoucements, or other content, RSS automatically tells you when something new is posted online.

For example, if you subscribe to "Philosophy Events Calendar RSS Feed," linked above, then each time a new conference is added to the Events Calendar at EpistemeLinks, information about it will appear in your news reader automatically without your having to visit the EpistemeLinks site.

What Tools Do I Need to Use RSS?
To start using RSS, you need a special news reader or aggregator that displays RSS content feeds from the websites you select. There are many different news readers available, many of which are free of charge. Some are available as desktop software that you download and install on your computer, while others are web-based where you visit their site where you have indicated the feeds you are interested in and they provide you the feeds in a convenient format. One popular Web-based aggregator is NewsGator. Another one is Google Reader.

However, if you use latest major browsers -- IE 7.0 and FireFox 2.0 -- then you have built-in newsreader support for RSS feeds right in your browser! So this is perhaps the easiest approach, although the web-based tools would let you access your list of feeds from any browser.

Once you have set up your news reader, you simply subscribe to the RSS content feeds you want. Click on one of the RSS feed links to obtain the RSS URL, which you will see in the "Address" field of your browser. Simply copy this URL and follow the instructions for your particular news reader to subscribe. (EpistemeLinks RSS Feeds are files that end in ".xml".)