THINK-ISRAEL features essays and commentaries that provide context for current events in Israel. The war Islam is waging against Israel and the West is top priority. We report on global anti-Semitism, Islamism and creeping Sharia.We aim to make sense of what's going on.
Subscribe to Think-Israel RSS
If you are reading this page, you almost certainly are using a browser. Google is a browser. Firefox is a browser. Yahoo is a browser. [Links to some of the more popular browsers are below]
Browsers are powerful programs which let you visit any of the millions of public websites and/or blog pages on the Internet. Browsers also provide you with search engines to find web pages or blogs that deal with topics of interest to you. These sites are usually active---they add content ---so that frequent revisits to each of your choices are needed for you to you needed to visit, scan and selectively read material in 20 or 30 websites that was constantly adding new articles, you would have time for little else.
RSS is a widely available tool that is easy to use. To choose a
web site or blog you only have to visit it once. RSS sites prominently
display the RSS icon 
or one or another of its analogs. The icon should appear in your browser bar. Clicking on the icon acesses a RSS reader where you cvan subscribe to news feeds by typing in a web address such as www.http://think-israel.org/ where prompted.
But out of sight is not out of mind. By clicking on the icon in the website, your system has initiated changes in your browser. It may be a new box ("widget") if your browser is Google. It may be a live bookmark if the browser is Firefox. At the very least, other browsers display new lists of article titles. These changes are sometimes called alerts.
For every website or blog in which you have clicked the RSS icon, there are additional widgets, lists,RSS readers, or live bookmarks added to YOUR browser page. In some cases, all lists from many websites are merged; in others, the lists from the web pages are separate.
While remaining in your own browser, you are able to view new titles and perhaps summaries. You can choose any of them you wish. Click on the one you want and, like magic, your browser puts up a new page, absolutely identical to the original article in its website. You still are in your browser. You did not have to go to the website,and the material you read is free of ads, come-ons and other irrelevancies.
You may respond at your convenience or ignore the alerts as they come up in the browser. Some browsers allow you to store-up unread alerts over several internet sessions and then you can do a lot of new reading all at once.
On the website, one of the staff constructs a list of newly posted articles, perhaps pictures, even music; their addresses, titles, descriptions, etc. This list is written in a specific format. After it is checked by a validator for grammar, it is called a "feed" and is stored at the website.
Just as the address of the website is readable by your search-engine, so some very special programs---"spiders, crawlers---acquire INTERNET-WIDE masses of information about postings in RSS websites. This information is available to the browser's back-end. Its translation and sorting results in the lists, gadgets, etc. which are collectively termed alerts. The set of alerts on your browser are almost unique, since it is unlikely that any one else has your particular tastes and interests when surfing the net.
IF YOU'RE USING THE Firefox web browser, you can access your new material through its "Live Bookmarks" function. Firefox RSS readers. Google, Firefox and Safari are browsers with both Windows and Unix versions.
If you use Yahoo, Messenger, or Xbox LIVE, you already have a Windows Live ID. Windows Explorer 9 RSS.
Google readers can be acces on the browser bar by clicking on more then even more and the RSS icon. Google offers several styles of RSS readers for Android and the Google Browser here.
Lynx is a text-only browser. Users limited by it miss much of the flavor of the internet. If you can, change to a more expressive browser by clicking on one of the other icons in the browser list. Linux RSS readers.
I-Phones and Safari readers can be found here.
If your browser does not behave as an aggregator/reader, you should select another browser which is RSS-capable. The icons offer a choice from among some browsers that are also aggregator/readers. There are many others. If you are using one not on our list, one that works, let us know and we will add it to the list with thanks. By the way, most icons you encounter on the net are NOT browser icons.
WHILE YOU ARE AT IT, select among the list of social networks as well as for skype and handhelds.
Please register to receive:
Sincerely
Think-Israel Staff