An RSS "news feed" consists of headlines from recent stories, together with brief synopses and links that lead you to complete articles.

You can organize RSS content from multiple websites in a single location — e.g., your browser's toolbar, your customized home page, or your blog. That means you can follow the news yourself without having to surf individual sites … or share the news that matters to you with the readers of your page.

We offer several RSS feeds that give you instant access to the latest Stony Brook news and events.

How to Read Your Subscriptions
Before you begin subscribing to RSS feeds, you need to make sure you have a way to read the headlines. Subscribers have several options for reading news. You can use:

• A customizable personal portal, such as my.yahoo.com or iGoogle

• A desktop RSS news reader or aggregator, available for both Windows and Macintosh, such as FeedReader and Vienna

• An RSS browser plug-in, such as Pluck for IE, Firefox, or Safari. Recent editions of many browsers are already RSS-enabled; e.g., Firefox's "Live Bookmarks," which lets you add news feeds to your favorites toolbar.

How to Subscribe to SB Headlines
If you're using an RSS-enabled browser like Firefox or Safari, click the orange icon corresponding to the feed you want; then click "Subscribe to this Feed," "Add Bookmark," or the equivalent.

If you use want your blog page or personalized portal to display your subscriptions, follow the procedures described on the site for subscribing to a feed. Look for text similar to "Add RSS by URL." At some point in the process, you'll need to copy and paste the URL corresponding to the news feed you select. To get this, click on the appropriate orange icon and copy the address that appears in your address bar.

If you're using news reader software, find the RSS listing page and drag the orange RSS button for the item you're interested in into your news reader window.