Take a ride with me on the RSS train!

[LarryEitel]

Please see our RSS article on the NoBlood Wiki. Afterward, please feel free to share your comments and/or observations in this thread.

Also, please take our poll so we can get a feel for how familiar RSS is to our users.

Thank you!

All aboard!

[LarryEitel]

Ok, now that you have taken the poll at the top of this thread and have reviewed the RSS article in the wiki, it's time to create your first NoBlood "Channel". In your favorite RSS reader/client,create a new channel and paste this URL into it:

http://www.noblood.org/external.php?type=RSS2&items=active&lastpost=true

After you have done that, feel free click here: http://www.noblood.org/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=41 to make a test post to see how it works.

[LarryEitel]

We just completed adding a provision on the NoBlood Forum to 'subscribe' on a forum level. What that means is that if you only wanted to monitor the "Ask a Professional" forum you can subscribe with your RSS reader. This will be especially convenient for healthcare pros to respond to questions that arise without 'clogging' their email Inbox.

We also now have a couple of RSS options on our wiki site. One is to monitor "recent changes", which will track changes made to individual pages. The other is to monitor "new pages" added to the wiki.

As for watching for changes made to wiki pages, you will still need to click on the tab "Watch" at the top of any article to insure that you are emailed with these changes. For some reason, these pages currently do not 'appear' as changed in the RSS reader. We are looking into a work around for this.

I hope you are enjoying the ride so far. Don't forget to share some of your observations. This will help all of us get the most out of this trip.

[Sharon Grant]

The RSS is proving to be extremely beneficial. I don't know how I ever lived without it!!!

I don't have to "search" the internet since the RSS feed searches the internet for me. I can have my RSS feed be based on certain key search words and the results will match my key words and then are instantly in my feed folder or In Box. Or if I am looking for a particular publication, the RSS feed will send me the new articles in that publication.

Be sure to catch the RSS Train!

[lswilson]

I copied and pasted the nobloodwiki rss address into my yahoo RSS feed but got a message saying ScreenHunter_001.gif

[LarryEitel]

Laurence, pasted the link into myYahoo and it worked. It seems to work well for monitoring Forum posts. It also provides a preview of the new post! Nice touch! (See attached image)

On the downside, however, is that if you want to track changes to pages on the wiki, links to changed pages only take you to the actual page RATHER than a page that shows you the ACTUAL CHANGES that were made on that page. See A very important consideration when choosing a RSS reader.

At this point my favorite Windows RSS reader is: NewzCrawler. As for browser RSS reader, MS Internet Explorer 7.0 works great and it is free. (See attached image).

[LarryEitel]

We just finished adding the ability to 'subscribe' to an individual article in the wiki. Open any wiki article, for example Intraoperative blood salvage. Notice the RSS icon at the top of the page in the 'history' tab and the RSS options in the left column (see attachment image for example). By subscribing to an article of interest, you can watch the progress and participate in the development of this or any other article more conveniently. Give it a try!

[lswilson]

Thanks, Larry

[jgrossberg]

OK. Larry. I'm going to give it a try as you showed me a couple of days ago. If I can do it, anyone can do it!

[Sharon Grant]

Jan,

I have full confidence in your ability. The RSS reader that I really like is Attensa. It can be used in different types of platforms:

1 for IE
2 for Firefox
3 as an add-in for MS Outlook
4 as an application stand alone

This RSS reader has a plethora of other features. Too many to list. Also it is free too!

But naturally to view all the different types out there it is best to go to the wiki site at: http://noblood.org/wiki/RSS