RSS, baby!

A handful of new RSS feeds have been added to Metro’s website for subscription. The new feeds can be found on Metro RSS Feeds and join existing feeds for The Source, El Pasajero, Metro News Headlines, Metro Library Transportation Headlines and Metro Library Primary Resources.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication – it’s a web technology that allows content to be published and syndicated for online consumption. Content driven websites (blogs, news sites, image and video sites, and web 2.0 / 3.0 sites) commonly offer this feature as a means to distribute or ‘syndicate’ their information. If you’ve seen the little orange icon with waves, you’ve been to a site with an RSS feed.

These new feeds were created by metro.net’s Lead Developer, Doug Goodwin; while the Jobs feed was created by Metro ITS.

A run down of the new feeds

Metro RSS feeds in a mobile browser

Metro Board / Committee Meetings – Current listing of Board and Committee meetings. (Board meetings and Agendas are posted at the beginning of each month with revisions to Agendas as-needed.)

Metro Job Opportunities – Current listing of job opportunities at Metro.

Destination Discounts – Current listing of participating discounts in the Metro Destinations Discounts program.

Planned Service Advisories – Up-to-minute listing of Planned Service Advisories. There’s actually four feeds here: Bus, Rail, Special or All combined. You can subscribe to your mode of choice or subscribe to them All. (A Special Advisory is one that may affect multiple lines and/or multiple modes.)

Step-by-step instructions on how to subscribe to a feed after the jump.

Subscribing to a feed

Whether on a laptop, touch pad or mobile device, there are a number of ways you can access a feed. Most web browsers are feed readers — this is a great option as its built-in and there’s no need to download further apps or software. But, if you’re a news junky or subscribe to a lot of content, you may want a reader with more options. For the desktop, I like the recommendations from this post of Lifehacker blog — there’s something different depending on what type of reader you are, or computer you have. For mobile devices, here are the top ‘RSS Readers’ in the Apple App Store (will launch iTunes), and here is a list of readers in the Android Market.

Let’s get started on subscribing to a feed – the step-by-step process below will work for any type of desktop or hand-held device.
Note: I’m using screens from an iPhone because its too difficult to take screen captures on an Android device – maybe this will change in the future, but I wanted you to know there’s no favoritism.

1. Save the web address (URL) of the feed you want
I sent the URL of Metro’s RSS to myself in email.
Tip: send the link(s) to yourself in email so you don’t have to type, just click or copy-and-paste!

Get your RSS links handy!

2. Open the URL in an RSS Reader
The iPhone’s Safari browser is a reader, so it automatically pulls the feed upon clicking.
Tip: click on the RSS icon on a webpage and see what happens in your browser. 

iPhone's Safari is a RSS Reader

3. Save the URL as a bookmark or favorite for easy retrieval
Tip: set an alert for RSS feeds you care about, you’ll receive an alert every time there is new info posted.

Bookmark or favorite your feed

Give the feeds a try and let us know what you think.