RV Builders' Hotline

Update: The Hotline RSS feed is discontinued. To follow daily RV activities by RSS, you might consider adding Letters from Flyover Country to your list.

RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is a convenient way to get content from MPR News and your favorite programs. An RSS feed contains headlines, summaries and links to full news stories. These feeds are viewed through an RSS news reader (also called an RSS aggregator).

What is an RSS reader?
RSS news readers are software programs similar to Web browsers that aggregate RSS feeds and display their information. They allow you to read multiple sources from a single interface.

There are a wide variety of RSS readers available on the Internet. Some readers are Web-based while others require you install a software program on your computer. Some are free to use.

Yahoo! and Google both offer comprehensive lists of RSS readers. A few sample readers are also offered below for the purpose of evaluation:

How do I use these feeds?
The first step, as described above, is to choose an RSS reader. Each reader has a slightly different way of adding a new feed (also called a "channel"). In most cases, you would click on Add, Subscribe, or Add New Channel in your reader. You can click on a feed from the list above, and copy the URL of the page into your RSS reader. The RSS feed will start to display and regularly update the headlines for you.

The Value of a Feed
What makes a feed great is that it brings the most current site content to you in a format that ensures your privacy and saves you the time of visiting a myriad of websites. This is typically done through the use of what is called an Aggregator or Newsreader.

Aggregators and News Readers
While you can sort of read feeds as the plain text intended for computers, it is a lot easier to use an aggregator or your own personal news reader. The two serve the same function; they let you subscribe to feeds, automatically go out and get the new posts for you (before you wake up, for example), then let you read them when you want, all in one place. Both can be found in "free" versions, as well as those with a cost.

News readers, also called feed readers or RSS readers, are software programs that run on your computer (or PDA, or even your phone!) that let you easily subscribe to feeds and read them all in one place. Some are relatively simple, showing the headline and summary. The fancier ones often work with (or in) your browser to make viewing the web page or blog behind the feed very easy. Typically subscribing to a feed with a news reader is an easy click or drag from your browser.

Aggregators are the web site equivalent of a news reader. For people that don't want to (or can't) install new software on the computers that they use, aggregators provide many of the same functions as news readers, but through going to a site with a web browser. This can be convenient for people that read news from public places, where they can't bring their reading list with them. One disadvantage to many aggregators is that it may take more than just clicking or dragging on a feed icon to subscribe.

How can I get help?
Because every RSS reader is different, we regret that we can't provide assistance to individual users. You may want to read NPR's RSS frequently asked questions page.