Now you can keep up to date with the ever-nomadic Act!vated Storytellers Find out about new shows, the latest travel adventure and read new stories the moment they are published. And listen to weekly podcasts.
What is RSS / XML?
The strange computer language that probably appears on your screen if you click the XML button is intended for a news aggregator program. It's really the same news content you see on this site, just in a different format.
News aggregator programs allow you to keep track of news at several web sites all in one place. It's the latest thing on the internet. News aggregator programs are available for most types of computers or, if you prefer, you can read your news through certain web sites.
Subscribe below with some popular, free web-based news aggregators that will run in your browser:
You can open the source file and add the URL
(http://www.activated-storytellers.com/rss_feed.xml )
or simply click on one of the buttons below:
Tip for My Yahoo Users: You can click on the edit button and choose "Edit Content" to customize the display.
Here's an example of what you'll see:
What is RSS?
Not quite sure what RSS is? Here is where you can learn more about it:
If you don't have or want RSS Feed you can:
- bookmark our site and check back often to see what is new.
About Podcasting
This week on Activated Stories
The Act!vated Storytellers also produce a free weekly podcast at Activated Stories.
What is a podcast?
A podcast is a prerecorded audio program much like a radio talk show that you can enjoy in a variety of different ways. You can listen to it on your computer, on your iPod or other portable MP3 player or you can even burn (i.e. copy) it to a CD. The term podcasting is the merger of two popular terms. The "Pod" comes from the name of the most popular MP3 player from Apple called an iPod and "casting" comes from the traditional term broadcasting. Even though the iPod is part of the name podcasting you don't have to have one to enjoy podcasts. There are thousands of podcasts being offered over the Internet on a variety of topics so the consumer now has the choice of what to listen to and when to listen to it. Another great benefit of podcasts is that you can use software called "podcatchers" like iPodder or iTunes to "subscribe" to specific shows like ours and then have them automatically downloaded to your computer so you can easily stay up to date without having to hunt them down on the web and download the files by hand.
- Wikipedia has more details about podcasts and podcasting.
How do I receive podcasts?
The best way to receive podcasts is to use something called a "podcatching client.", or simply "podcatcher". A podcatching client is a program that you install on your PC. It periodically goes online to access a machine-readable XML file called an "RSS feed". (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication). If it discovers any new episodes available, it downloads them for you. It's that simple.
- To learn more about subscribing check How to Subscribe to a Podcast Using Juice
How do I get these episodes onto my portable MP3 player?
That depends on what type of portable MP3 you have. If you have an iPod, then iTunes is the thing for you. In fact, the latest version of iTunes (4.9) also doubles up as a podcatching client!
iPodder is another podcatching client which is capable of automatically transfering your files into iTunes ready for you to copy onto your MP3 player. iPodder works fine all by itself - it doesn't need iTunes. But if you do have iTunes as well, then iPodder will make use of iTunes' scripting engine to co-operate with it nicely. Many people prefer to use iPodder for podcatching because it gives you more information about what's going on. It does one job, and it does it very well.
These are not the only podcatching clients available. Here's a list of podcatchers we recommend:
- iPodder (Windows, Mac, Gnu/Linux)
- iPodderX (Mac)
- Doppler (Windows)
- iTunes 4.9 (new release 6/28/2005) (Mac & Windows)
- Nimiq (Windows)
