et Headlines on Your Desktop With RSS!? If you are an active reader of news over the Internet, then you are probably seeing more and more sites making this somewhat cryptic offer to you.

Don?t worry. Using RSS to your advantage is a cinch, as I?ll explain below. RSS stands for ?Really Simple Syndication? and is fast becoming the popular way to scan a lot of news sites quickly and efficiently.

At its most basic level RSS is a Web-based method of bringing content to your desktop without having to actually surf through a variety of sites to get a news fix.

To make RSS work to your advantage, you need a site that offers the service and you need the software to read the feed. The software can be an add-on (or plug-in as these are called) to your favourite browser or it can be a stand-alone application. The newsreader aggregates the headlines and blurbs from dozens of different Internet sites or RSS ?channels? that you request it to scan.

Every headline is linked back to full article on the originating site.

First you need to download one of the free RSS readers from the Internet. One of the simpler RSS feeders is Active Web Reader, which can be downloaded from ZDNet at www.zdnet.com. Go to the downloads section and do a search for ?RSS readers?. There are quite a few free ones out there.

Another highly rated RSS reader is Pluck (www.pluck.com), a free Internet Explorer add-on that is only available for those using Windows 2000 and XP. The Opera browser (www.opera.com) quite logically comes with an in-built RSS reader. It will only be a matter of time before other browsers jump on the bandwagon.Active Web Reader is typical of its ilk.

The software opens like a normal browser with a series of bookmarks running down the left-hand side. The software has a live-update feature, which automatically refreshes. You click on a link feed, for example Yahoo! or the BBC, and you get a list of headlined and linked summaries.

You also can select from a number of styles to display the feeds. If you decide to stop reading and close the application, you can choose to have Active Web Reader running in the background, collecting the updated feeds.

To add a feed go to a site?s webpage and click on the link to their RSS feed. For example the BBC offers up 17 different RSS feeds, each geared to a specific interest.

However the service is buried in the site and you really have to search for the feed.Go to the BBC site (www.bbc.co.uk). Then go to the section with the headlines you?re interested in, for example ?World News?. Scroll to the bottom of the page where you a link that says ?RSS version? in the red services strip at the bottom of the page.In addition to RSS feeds, the BBC also offers e-mail news alerts, a Desktop ticker, and feeds for mobiles and PDAs.

It?s way ahead of the pack in giving readers the choice of how they want to receive the service.If you?re sick of wading through a blizzard of e-mails to find your news alerts then RSS is for you. Clicking on the RSS link for a particular channel will bring you to a strange looking page full of HTML and XML code.

Don?t worry, you?ll never have to see this page again. Simply copy the link to that page. Then go to your RSS reader and add the HTML link as a new channel. Update and presto you?ve got a feed.For those who like to build their own Internet sites or run a blog it?s possible to add an RSS feed for your fans.

For more information read Danny Wall?s excellent article on how to set up an RSS feed page at www.devshed.com. Click on the link to the ?PHP? section and you?ll see Wall?s article there. Hint: It?s not that hard and you only need to know how to copy and paste.

Google continues to innovate in the world of search engines. Recently the search engine added a new service for researchers that I?ve found to be excellent. Google Scholar searches only journal articles, theses, books, preprints, and technical reports across any area of research.

It?s also a smart tool that brings the most useful references to the fore in the Google fashion. Pages with many links pointing to them are considered ?authorities?, and are ranked highest in search returns.

The ranking also lists the number of citations made by other scholars for a particular work, a very useful feature in determining the impact of a particular line of research.

A test version of the search engine is available at http://scholar.google.com.

For the budding scholar, Google has added another search tool: University Search.

This allows you to restrict your search to a specific US college or university website. You can use it for finding out admissions information, course schedules, alumni news or teacher profiles.

Click on Google?s ?Services? section and then the link to University Search. On the page you select your target school (all are listed in alphabetical order) and search away.