How to use free RSS feeds

What is an RSS Feed?

An RSS feed is your way of getting our headlines under your direct and personal control.

It is not "push" technology - how often your desktop machine checks our website for updates is entirely up to you. Then, depending on the display option you choose, our headlines either appear in your e-mail program or in a browser window on your desktop.

We don't send you adverts, we don't send you e-mail (although on some systems it looks like e-mail, it isn't) and we do not send "active content."

For our content, we suggest you set your system to update every three or four hours. Then your system looks at our front page and if there are any new entries since it last checked, it adds them to your list. If there are no new entries since it last checked, it downloads nothing.

Setting up an RSS feed in your e-mail client (that's the e-mail program on your PC or Mac).

Thunderbird by Mozilla.

This is our prefered e-mail client and it's designed for RSS feeds! On all platforms (i.e. Linux, Windows, etc.) the process is the same.

On the top menu follow File > New > Account (this is an "account" on your local machine: it is not an "account" with us.)

On the radio buttons, click RSS and News

Choose a name for your folder: We suggest Anti Money Laundering Network (we will be adding more feeds later so an account just for us is a good idea).

Click on Finish to create the account.

Look in the left pane and you will find the account you have just created. Click on the name of the account.

In the main pane, click on "manage subscriptions"

Click on "Add"

For WMLR:O news feed, copy the following: http://www.wmlro.com/cms/index.php/news_user/rss/feed/news and paste it into the "url" window

Put a tick in the box to say "Headlines only" (you need to do this for our system)

Click on "OK."

Wait! The system will now verify the link and download into the folder the twenty most recent headlines.

Then the system will check WMLR:O News and when new headlines are added will download them to your PC shortly after publication.

All you have to do then is look to see if you have any new items in your headline box. And, of course, with Thunderbird you can sort by name or date, search and perform various options on the folder.

If you are not already a Thunderbird user, you can download it from www.mozilla.org for free.

Outlook Express by Microsoft

Currently, Outlook Express does not support RSS feeds and we have not found any hint that it is intended to do so in the future. But don't worry, there are other ways of getting them.

Outlook by Microsoft

If you are part of the "must upgrade" crowd, then Outlook 2007 takes RSS feeds. The version you probably have does not. Microsoft suggests using third party products which may integrate with Outlook or operate independently from the desktop. Microsoft recommends Attensa.

Internet Explorer by Microsoft

Right now, IE6 does not handle RSS feeds.Users of Windows XP who are authorised to install the latest versions of Internet Explorer (web browser) will be able to add RSS feeds into their browser with IE7. But IE7 is not yet a full release program: it is in "beta testing." That means that it's not stable and so your IT department will probably not permit you to download and install it. BUT IE7 will not be made available for those using e.g. Win98, Win95 or even Win2000, even more reason to move to Firefox as your preferred browser as MS has already stopped issuing security patches for Win95 and Win98 leaving those users vulnerable to internet exploitation of their systems.

RSS Readers

There are many independent readers on the market. Some are free and others are commercial programs but cost only a few dollars. BE CAREFUL: make sure that if you are getting a "free" package, that it does not automatically set itself up to download adverts or other material that you don't want, including graphics. Some products may be difficult to remove default feeds from, depending on the deviousness of the authors. And they should be asking for information, not transmitting any data except the address of the feed you want to see. Do research onto each program before you install it. We suggest FeedReader from www.feedreader.com

Google Reader

gmail users can use a form of web based RSS. We've not tried it but it looks pretty simple from the on-line material at http://www.google.com/reader/things/tour. You just add in the link to http://www.wmlro.com/cms/index.php/news_user/rss/feed/news, it seems

Webmasters

A free tool (donations are welcome) is at www.rss-info.com. It's pretty neat. There are, of course, many others.