Stay Up to Date with RSS

Stay up to date with Microsoft RSS feeds

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is technology you can use to have information sent to you, rather than having to go look for it. Many Web sites, including Microsoft's, offer RSS as a way to have headlines delivered to you.

This page introduces RSS and helps you get started using it.

What is RSS?

RSS technology is used to create a "feed" (list) of headlines that you can have delivered to you. For example, when we publish new headlines on a site that supports RSS, those headlines can be added to a feed that you can subscribe to. (Note that not every headline that goes up on a Web site will automatically be sent to you. What you receive may vary depending on how we update the feed.)

RSS feeds enable you to get update notifications delivered directly to your desktop through the news aggregator software program of your choice (we recommend the new Internet Explorer 7 browser). RSS offers a convenience because you can subscribe to feeds from several Internet sites and automatically pull together headlines from all the sources into one list. This lets you quickly browse the list of new content without visiting each site.

What do I need to use RSS?

In order to receive RSS feeds, you need an RSS reader (The new Internet Explorer 7 has an RSS reader built-in to the browser and is available via free download from here). You then subscribe to the Web site from which you want to receive content, and the information will be delivered automatically to your RSS reader.

Here are the steps:

1	Download Internet Explorer 7 from here.
2	After installing Internet Explorer 7, open the browser and click the link of the icon next to a set of links or headlines on your favorite Web site or from the list on the right that you're most interested in to subscribe to the category.
3	Follow the instructions offered by Internet Explorer 7 to complete the subscription.
4	Use your RSS reader to read news when it arrives and click headline links to get the full Web page. Note: If you have a My MSN page, simply click on the "My MSN" Image and the feed will be added automatically your page.