RSS Feeds

Available RSS Feeds

Bid Listings

Board Mtg Agendas

MetroBus Rider Alerts

MetroLink Rider Alerts

News Releases

More RSS feeds will be available soon!

What is RSS?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. (Note: RSS can also be known as "Rich Site Summary" or "RDF Site Summary) Syndication means you don't have to visit each site individually to see what's new — you can simply scan headlines or brief article summaries and click to read the full text. That’s the "really simple" part.

How do I use RSS?

Typically, people use RSS to:

Gather, read, or quickly scan frequently updated headlines from a variety of sources using a "News Aggregator" or "RSSreader" program.
Incorporate syndicated headlines into their personal weblogs (often called "blogs") as a way to display information from different publishers.

A number of free and commercial news aggregators are available for download. These aggregators come in two types: software that you download, and online aggregators. Some of the more popular online aggregators are the MyYahoo! service from Yahoo, the MyMSN service from MSN.com, BlogLines, and Google's Reader.

Some of the more popular desktop aggregators include AmphetaDesk, BottomFeeder, FeedReader, and SlashDock.

Some of the more popular PDA/Blackberry/Mobile aggregators include Egress, NewsBreak, PocketRSS, PicoNews, MReader, and FeederReader.

Additionally, some web browsers, including Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, allow you to incorporate RSS feeds that will be downloaded and viewable through the browser. Firefox calls them "Live Bookmarks." Internet Explorer v6 and below users can download a plugin called RSSExplorer.

For a more comprehensive list of aggregators, please use your favorite search engine and search on the term "rss news aggregators." As an example, here are the search results from Google.

How do I sign up for the RSS feeds?

This will vary depending upon what aggregator you choose to use, so be sure to read the instructions provided by your aggregator/service.

Basically, you will find an orange rectangle with white text saying "RSS" ( ) on pages that contain RSS feeds. Right-click on the icon (rectangle) and choose "Copy Shortcut," "Copy Link Location," "Copy Link Address," etc. (the actual language of the dialog box will vary depending not only on the brand of web browser you use, but also the version of the web browser) and then paste this address into the field your aggregator has for adding the direct URL to the RSS feed.

You can also get the addresses for the RSS feeds off of this one-stop page as well. Just look in the sidebar box in the upper right-hand portion of this column.

Each RSS Feed Aggregator has their own settings on how often they refresh their data feed. If it is critical to you to have the most current information from a particular feed, be sure to either set your Aggregator's refresh rate to a lower time interval, or just manually refresh the feed.