News just in...

Plus has an RSS newsfeed, so you can get our latest mathematical headlines delivered straight to your computer - you can even publish them on your own website!

Keeping up with the latest news has got to be easier than this!

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is a standardised method for sharing web content. A website will publish an RSS news feed (for example, the Plus newsfeed) containing links to and brief descriptions of new material, such as the latest news story, blog entry or article. Many sites now produce RSS feeds, including the BBC, NASA and now Plus. Just look out for the button, or a link to "RSS", "newsfeed" or something similar when you are next browsing the web. Alternatively you can find thousands of RSS feeds at Syndic8.com, RSS-xpress and other RSS directories.

But why are websites such as these bothering to produce a newsfeed? One of the main reasons is to make it easier for readers to keep up with their latest content. Because RSS feeds are in a standardised format, software called aggregators or newsreaders can automatically read and process RSS feeds. By installing such software on your computer, you can build your own personalised newspaper consisting of the headlines and descriptions of new stories from all your favourite sites (at least those that publish RSS feeds). Then, rather than having to visit each site every day to check what's new, you can have all the new headlines automatically delivered to your computer, and browse through them all in one place and follow the links to the stories that catch your interest. (Find out more about RSS aggregators at Sitepoint.com and in How to speed-read the net.)

If you have any comments about the Plus RSS newsfeed, we'd love to hear from you at plus@maths.cam.ac.uk.

Happy reading from the Plus team!