Posted on 03/13/2003 11:49:53 AM PST by Jakenuts
Do you spend a fair amount of time hitting 'refresh' to keep up to date with the current news from Free Republic. If so, you might consider this free & efficient alternative that will automatically keep you on top of the news, “FreeRSS”.
RSS or ‘Really Simple Syndication’ is an internet format that lets news sites publish a index of current stories with brief descriptions and links to the main stories. Because the readers only view full stories if they are interested in the topic, this saves bandwidth and time. RSS feeds are available from almost every major news site on the internet including AP, BBC, CNet, etc.
How to use RSS and Free Republic:
1.) Get an RSS reader.
Just about any one will do. I use this one which is free and seems to work fine. A list of other ones can be found at this site.
2.) Point it at this feed: http://www.dev1.eraserver.net/PACIFICA/FreeRSS/Index.xml
Note, this is a somewhat experimental site, please be patient if it seems troublesome, I’ll do my best to keep it going.
3.) Set the “Update Frequency”
I have mine set to ‘5 Minutes’ so that every 5 minutes the reader gets the latest headlines. You might also wish to limit how many topics it ‘archives’ to something like 50 (one page).
That’s it! You now have a full-time Free Republic monitor that saves you the effort of hitting refresh, and saves the web servers from unnecessary traffic. Again, this is a somewhat experimental setup, so please let me know if you notice any problems.
*** Disclaimer – This stuff is all free, non proprietary, and devoid of commercial intent. All articles link directly back to Free Republic, which is as it should be. No rabbits were any way harmed by the creation or use of the index, though if the Froggies could be adversely impacted by the content, so much the better.
Screenshot:
Nice program, thanks. Lot more convenient than opening IE and browsing every 30mins.
You can FR mail me if you don't want to use up thread bandwidth. Thanks.
Cool! Thanks.
Bump for ref.
But good luck...
Cool! I'll have to check this out.
Red
Whatever link was given at the beginning of this thread is apparently not being updated. It would be great if FR had its own internal RSS feed, so that it would be perfectly up to date with the rest of the site. It would make getting FR on mobile devices very, very easy. (As it is, I can get FR on my cellphone, but the page always renders wrong.)
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