Personally, I like to scan headlines using RSS feeds. All of the major News
channels and newspapers, like New York Times, Fox News, MSNBC, and even my
local newspaper provide RSS feeds.
The major advantages of RSS feeds are;
- the latest content is automatically downloaded to your computer when it
is updated (refreshed),
- the update is automatically scheduled to happen in the background and the
frequency can be set to your preference.
- There is no clutter or ads!
- the latest information from the site is at the top
- there are normally level 2 headings for each headline, a short summary and
a link to the full article if interested
- you can scan the headlines using the "h" or "2" quick navigation keys
- podcasts are available as attached files
There are many ways to view these feeds. There are sites like Google Reader
that collect and manage these feeds. There are also applications that will
do this as well as manage podcasts. I just keep it simple and use the
built-in features of IE 7! Go to a web site that you think might have
interesting, frequent updates, like Foxnews.com. If there are any RSS feeds
on that page, JAWS will announce this along with the number of links and
headings. Pressing Alt + J will click on an icon in the Toolbar that
changes color when a feed is available. This will place you in a list of
available feeds. Most of the time there is only one feed in the list, but
try the down arrow anyway to see if there are any other choices. Press
Enter on the feed you want to look at. The resulting page will be the
current content of the feed with a couple of extra links at the top. If
this looks like a feed you would like to view frequently, look for the
"Subscribe" link at the top of the page. Adding a feed is similar to adding
a Favorite. If there is no indication of an RSS feed on the main page, do a
find for "rss" or "feed" to find a link to get to their available feeds.
Now that you are subscribed to a few feeds, just press Control + J in
Internet Explorer 7 or 8. This will place you in your feeds list. The
feeds name will have "New" appended if new content has been downloaded.
Pick the feed to view and hit Enter. Again, pressing "h" or "2" will move
to the next headline or post. Pressing the Applications key in the list
provides other options like Properties, manual refresh to force an update,
rename and delete.
I have about thirty feeds I monitor. Here are a few:
Fox News Headlines
http://www.foxnews.com/xmlfeed/rss/0,4313,0,00.rss
MSNBC Headlines (probably already in your feeds list in the Microsoft
folder)
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=44406
PC Magazine Breaking News
http://feeds.ziffdavis.com/ziffdavis/pcmag/breakingnews
Windows Weekly Podcast (attached audio MP3 file can be downloaded
automatically in the feed's Properties)
http://leoville.tv/podcasts/ww.xml
Freedom Scientific FSCast (also has the audio as an attached file)
http://www.freedomscientific.com/FSCast/rss.xml
Don Marang
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marilyn Walker" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2009 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] Friendly home page for news
I would suggest www.nytimes.com and signing up for daily headlines withi
links to the stories, blogs and columns. marilyn
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