What are feeds? I see "RSS", "XML", and "Atom" out there, but I don't know how I might use these links when I find them.
Feeds are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email. Feeds also make it possible for site content to be packaged into "widgets," "gadgets," mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies that make it possible to display blogs, podcasts, and major news/sports/weather/whatever headlines just about anywhere.

What Does This Mean?
You may recognize the universal feed icon or these "chicklets" from your favorite websites, blogs, and podcasts. These icons represent content in any format - text, audio or video - to which you can subscribe and read/watch/listen using a feed reader.

How do I read feeds?
If you want to browse and subscribe to feeds, you have many choices. Today, there are more than 2,000 different feed reading applications, also known as "news aggregators" (for text, mostly) or "podcatchers" (for podcasts). There are even readers that work exclusively on mobile devices.

Some require a small purchase price but are tops for ease-of-use and ship with dozens of feeds pre-loaded so you can explore the feed "universe" right away. Free readers are available as well; a search for "Feed reader" or "Feed aggregator" at popular search sites will yield many results. A handful of popular feed readers are listed at the bottom of this page.

A typical interface for a feed reader will display your feeds and the number of new (unread) entries within each of those feeds. You can also organize your feeds into categories and even clip and save your favorite entries (with certain applications).

If you prefer, you can use an online, web-based service to track and manage feeds. Online services give you the advantage of being able to access your feed updates anywhere you can find a web browser. Also, upgrades and new features are added automatically.

Theta Chi of Penn State RSS Feed:
Theta Chi of Penn State currently provides a RSS feed. By clicking the button, at the bottom of each page, you can subscribe to website updates. It's easy!

Our feed address is: feed://feeds.feedburner.com/ThetaChiOfPennState

Don't have a news reader? It's easy to get one. Here's how:
To create your own news page that picks up new articles from RSS feeds (including ours), you need to sign up for a "reader" that can remember and display the headlines you pick. Three of the easiest ones are My AOL, My MSN, and My Yahoo. Popular readers on the Internet include: Bloglines, FeedDemon, Pluck, and Newsgater for Windows and Mac; Sage and Live Bookmarks for Firefox. Readers that live on your computer desktop (not on the Internet) include Feeddemon and Thunderbird.

Here are some additonal readers: