Getting the most out of UTPride.net with syndication

One of the key benefits of the UTPride.net system is that it provides "feeds" of its published content that you can use to keep informed about new stuff (e.g. by email or instant messenger) without having to come back to the website.

The feeds are provided using a technology called RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication. The technology originated with news and blog sites but is increasingly used to syndicate any information.

It's pretty simple to make use of RSS to get more out of UTPride.net. The key thing you need to learn is that RSS feeds are usually identified by a little orange icon with white text reading "XML" or "RSS". It looks like this:

When you find a feed icon on a page that you want to syndicate, right-click on it, and choose "Copy Link Location" (or "Copy Shortcut") from the menu provided. This will give you the feed address. If you use the icon from the paragraph above, you'll get the address for the basic data feed for UTPride.net, which includes events and articles published by all the queer student groups at U of T. Note that if you left-click on the icon, you'll see the content of the feed, which will look like computer code. Don't panic! Remember, you only need the feed address.

Now you can use this feed information in many ways:

• Have syndicated content sent directly to your email inbox whenever it updates, or as a daily or weekly digest
• Get live updates through your instant messenger client
• Have updated information show up on your iPod every time you sync
• Get updates delivered to your personalized Yahoo, Google or MSN home page
• Put an automatically-updating feed on your club website