"Sapphire's input provides me with an additional source of impartial, practical, advice and guidance..."
Steve Marshall,
Head of Security Architecture, Barclaycard
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What is RSS
RSS - Really Simple Syndication
RSS feeds is a way to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading.

Most people are interested in many websites whose content changes on an unpredictable schedule. Within the security arena examples of such websites are security news, virus notifications and IT trends. Repeatedly checking each website to see if there is any new content can be monotonous.

E-mail notification of changes was an early solution to this problem. Due to the volume of e-mail that enters a company messages from websites are often mistaken for spam and blocked or are deleted by the user as it is not pertinent to them.

RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple web sites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organised and distinct from e-mail.

RSS works by having the website author maintain a list of notifications on their website in a standard way. This list of notifications is called an RSS feed. Users who are interested in finding out the latest headlines or changes can check this list. A RSS reader or aggregators automatically access the RSS feeds of websites and organises the results for you.

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There are many different versions of the 'reader' some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail.

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want to receive in your news reader, by finding and subscribing to the relevant RSS feeds. Sapphire's feeds are highlighted above right.

To subscribe to our feeds simply use the any of the following URL’s

News Feed: http://www.sapphire.net/news/rss.asp
Events Feed: http://www.sapphire.net/news/rss_events.asp

RSS Readers
There is a range of different RSS readers available and new versions are appearing all the time. Different readers work on different operating systems, so you will need to choose one that will work with your computer.

Windows
SharpReader

Mac OS
News Gator

Linux
Straw

Web based:

www.yahoo.com
www.reader.google.com

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