What is RSS? How do I use it?
Budget Direct now offers RSS to access and keep up to date with our latest news and travel alerts. This page is designed to help you find out more about what RSS is and how you can use it.
What is RSS?
RSS allows you to see when websites have added new content. You can get automatic updates of headlines and articles, as soon as its published, without having to visit the websites you get the RSS feed from.
RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication'. In essence, RSS feeds are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people.
How do I use it?
In general, the first thing you need is something called an RSS reader. This is a piece of software that checks the feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable, stand-alone applications.
Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail.
Once you have chosen a RSS reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want it to receive. For example, if you would like to subscribe to the Budget Direct ‘Travel Alerts’, go to the Travel Alerts page (http://budgetdirect.com.au/travel-insurance/budget-direct-travel-insurance/travel-alerts.html) and you will see a yellow icon in the top right of the page.
If you click on the RSS button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your RSS reader. Most sites that offer feeds use a similar orange button, but some may just have a normal web link.
Some browsers automatically check for feeds for you when you visit a website, and display an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to feeds much easier. For more details on these, please check their websites.
