dumbstruck <dumbstruc[at]gmail.com> writes:

- quote -

RSS feeds are not only browser-independent, but they're
actually meant to be read by what's called a "news aggregator".
Some browsers are able to read rss feeds and, usually, present
the headlines as if they were a list of bookmarks. I find
that format to be entirely worthless.

On the Mac, there's an absolutely excellent aggregator
called NetNewsWire, which presents the content of the
rss feeds very much like reading e-mail - list of feeds
down the left, headlines across the top, *content* under
the list of headlines.

Google provides similar functionality via their "Reader"
web application, which works in most browsers. I often
us it within FireFox - or whatever browser I happen to
be using at any given time. The especially nice thing
about Google Reader is that I can use it from anywhere
and my feeds are all in place and up-to-date. It's
accessible at <http://reader.google.com
- quote -

Those seem mostly to be news organizations, which may
or may not be helpful to investors. I find that I get
most of my investment news from normal news pages
(ie. news.google.com) - and also some great picking
and choosing amongst the news by having a portfolio
set up on Yahoo Finance - the portfolio does contain
stocks I own, but also symbols which cause it to grab
news articles related to a wider field (a couple of
ETFs, the ^DJI and a couple of other indices and
interest rates), etc. The News and Recent Financial
Blogs sections beneath the portfolio full of quotes is
very very helpful.

I'm more likely to be reading various economists
and political commentators via the RSS reader.

Another thing worth knowing about if you us RSS readers -
Google can construct a custom RSS feed for you which
is constantly updated with the results of a news
search of your choice. For example, a constantly
updated search of the news with the search term "Bernanke"
is generated by the following link:
<http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ne...F-8&output=rss
Be careful out there. It's easy to get information
overload. RSS readers may make it *too* easy to get
too much...


--
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No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting

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Here are some example financial RSS feed URLs that I guess aren't
browser dependent. They would be uniform and exceptionally efficient
to browse if installed right on Firefox bookmarks, but I guess the
cluttered mess you get otherwise is better than nothing. Any better
RSS content on taxes, investment, personal finance?

http://rss.cnn.com/rss/money_pf_taxes.rss
http://feeds.feedburner.com/etftrends-feed
http://www.ft.com/rss/markets
http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/...t/Business.xml
http://rss.cnn.com/rss/magazines_moneymag.rss
feed://www.economist.com/rss/finance_and_economics_rss.xml
feed://feeds.wsjonline.com/wsj/xml/rss/3_7011.xml

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dumbstruck wrote:
- quote -

Getting a little off-topic but...you said "ads" and "Firefox" - did you
install the AdBlock Plus extension? It's a tiny add-on that turns most
of the ads into grey rectangles, by blocking the servers that provide
the ads (it updates that list on its own). Really cleans up sites like
the WSJ though occasionally you hit delays with page-loads. It's also
interesting to see how many links on a site like Yahoo finance are
served up by an ad server. Look up extensions in the Help menu of FF.

I haven't dug too deep with RSS feeds, but I did set up a MyYahoo page
with a bunch of the feeds Yahoo lets you select automatically (many
financial). Plus the weather in SF & the Sierras, and my calendar. You
can add a lot more including your own RSS feeds, by URL.

-Tad

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to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting
guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to
which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE
MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the
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RSS feeds can be a revolutionary way to maintain awareness of relevant
news and articles in a fraction of the normal time and effort. Does
anyone have favorite financially oriented feeds to share?

It breaks the normal paradigm, where normally you want a source with
trusted editing of wheat (articles) from the chaff to avoid wasting
your time. Now you can throw a big net and get the rare gems from
disparate and irregular sources. In fact you kind of have to, because
not so many sources are crazy enough to offer their content thru RSS
which let you skip the top level ads.

Most RSS readers aren't very efficient, but I find the Foxfire web
browser a favorite IF (and only if) YOU PUT RSS LINKS ON IT'S BOOKMARK
TOOLBAR. Then with only a single click I can navigate about 1000 web
articles, in a 20x50 dynamic grid. No scrolling, no other clicking,
and it dynamically updates as articles appear.

My favorite might be the financial section (and others) of The
Economist Magazine if I didn't already listen to their every word by
paid podcast. So I kind of scrape lower parts of the financial barrel
from the Financial Times, Money Magazine, NYT biz section, Fidelity
investor newsletter and so on. Any better RSS suggestions? I don't
post URL's because I think they are changable depending on your
browser .

------ Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive
to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting
guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to
which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE
MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the
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