Washington State Biomedical Association

There’s a great way to stay current with the latest news about the WSBA. It’s called RSS, which stands for Real Simple Syndication. You can stay up-to-date without needing to look at the web page in question or set up an account with a user name and password. Instead you subscribe just to the specific information you are interested in. The New York Times web site, for instance, allows you to subscribe to feeds alerting you to the latest stories in world news, US news, or even movie reviews, among many others. Our WSBA website has two feeds that you can subscribe to – the events feed, to check updated events, and the comments feed to read what members say about postings.

To get started you’ll need to have a feed reader or aggregator. There are a variety of RSS readers available, from stand alone applications to plug-ins for email programs like Microsoft Outlook. Web browsers such as Firefox 3.0.6 , Internet Explorer 7, and even Safari if you are a Mac user, have the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed built-in. To monitor the 54 web pages I follow, I use a web based reader called Newsgator Online. It allows me the flexibility to access my feeds from any computer with an internet connection, anywhere. It even allows me to check my feeds on my cell phone. Another good alternative is Feedburner.

Once you find a web page you would like to subscribe to, look for the RSS button. On the WSBA web page, for instance, it is on the right hand side under the heading ‘Meta’. There are links for Entries RSS and Comments RSS, followed by the RSS logo. Click on the link and follow the directions of whichever reader you are using.

Give it a try. I think you’ll like the convenience of staying up-to-date with the WSBA and other sites, without having to go to each web page, and your feeds will update whenever new content is added.