RSS, short for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, is built on the XML standard to provide a specially designed mark-up language used by websites and content producers to develop news and information feeds that can be easily distributed and read by specific software programs, a process called syndication. As a publisher of news and other content, Rigzone is able to create an RSS feed that you can access. Receiving Rigzone's RSS feed is like receiving a constantly updating newsletter that knows what content you want and loads it to your computer whenever content of interest becomes available. RSS is able to break up and transmit discrete pieces of information such as an article's title, body, author, date, and topic. The information can then be queried by your RSS reader and displayed the way you like it.

By pulling in RSS feeds from all of your favorite online news and information sources, from Rigzone to the New York Times, you can enjoy instant access to the information most important to you all in one location. Additionally, while many spam filters and firewalls may inadvertently hinder your ability to receive and properly access e-newsletters such as the Rigzone Daily News, your RSS reader is immune to these problems as it proactively goes and gets the news on your behalf.

You can access Rigzone's RSS feed using a news reader software program or via several online web reader tools. Of the online tools, one of the most popular is My Yahoo! – you can add RSS feeds from Rigzone and hundreds of other websites to your My Yahoo! account and enjoy instant access to the news and it is delivered right to you as it happens. If you use the Microsoft Outlook e-mail software, you can use the NewsGator software plug-in or another plug-in to view RSS feeds directly through Outlook. Alternately, you can download and install any of a wide range of free or paid for news reader software packages (visit Download.com to download various news reader packages). Opting for a software package allows you to pull your news into your computer without going out to get it while opting for an online news reader service requires you to travel to a web page where your news is pulled in and displayed – either way all of your headlines can be accessed via one quick, common interface saving you time and keeping you informed.

Once you have an RSS news reader software program set up on your computer or an RSS reader service set up online, you need to tell your reader software or service what content you want. You do this by visiting your favorite websites, such as Rigzone, and finding the RSS feed. Each RSS feed has a unique URL (website address) associated with it. Each news reader software or service will provide a way to add a new channel or RSS feed. You simply copy and paste the URL associated with the RSS feed you want into your news reader software or service and start enjoying the wonders of content aggregation. The URLs for Rigzone's RSS feeds can be found at www.rigzone.com/news/rss.asp. If you use My Yahoo! to aggregate and view RSS feeds, you can simply click the button marked "+ My Yahoo!" on Rigzone's RSS page.

If you plan to use an online service for aggregating and reading your news through RSS feeds, we prefer My Yahoo! for its ease of use, ubiquity, and price (free). If you prefer to use a software reader that you download and install on your computer, we recommend FeedDemon as a standalone reader at a reasonable price (www.feeddemon.com) or Awasu if you're looking for a free but slightly less full featured reader (www.awasu.com). If you want to be able to view RSS feeds directly through out Outlook, you may want to consider NewsGator, which integrates a news reader into the Outlook software package (www.newsgator.com).

Yes, you can use RSS to display limited Rigzone news content on your website or in your blog. You can display an article title, description, link, and image. If you display content gathered through the Rigzone RSS feed you must include the copyright included in the feed and you must include the link back to Rigzone for the full news article. Content provided by Rigzone through our RSS feeds remains the copyrighted content of Rigzone.