Channel Directories

There are thousands of free public RSS information sources on the internet. To find channels that interest you, visit these popular RSS syndicators and browse their channel directories.

Once you've found channels that interest you, subscribe to them individually or download an OCS Channel Directory file and import it into NewsDesk. See the sidebar on this page for help with bringing channels into NewsDesk.

BlogStreet

BlogStreet is one of the easiest ways I've found to locate weblogs and their RSS channels. To find the RSS channel for a weblog, use their search page to find weblogs by keyword. When the search results appear, click the [BlogHome] link next to a weblog that interests you. That will take you to a BlogStreet page with a link to the RSS feed. Of the more than 136,000 weblogs they track, about 13,000 have RSS channels. You may also find their Neighbourhood report useful - it shows you weblogs that are related to each other.

Moreover Technologies

Moreover Technologies provides real-time information from thousands of hand-picked news and industry sources. While they make a living by selling real-time information management solutions, they have kindly made a subset of their computer- and human-screened news feeds available to you for personal and non-commercial use. Moreover updates these feeds every 15 minutes.

myRSS

What do you do when your favorite web site doesn't publish an RSS channel? myRSS has the answer: use their free service to create a custom channel for just about any web page. For example, to stay informed about your customers, competitors, and partners, use myRSS to create channels for their web sites. Then use NewsDesk to subscribe to these new channels. Free channels are updated daily. For a fee, myRSS will update the channel more frequently. myRSS also offers an OCS Channel Directory with thousands of free channels.

NewsIsFree

NewsIsFree collects headlines from thousands of internet sources. Using their news portal, you can browse sources by broad categories, search for news by keyword, create custom news pages, and send headlines to others. NewsIsFree also offers a modestly-priced premium service that allows you to create custom RSS feeds, customize the look of your news pages, and integrate with weblogs and web services.

Purple Pages

Purple Pages is dedicated to helping small businesses, especially the Irish small business community, take advantage of internet resources. To that end, they provide an extensive index of RSS feeds from all over the internet.

Syndic8

Syndic8 is a community-driven channel directory that recently listed more than 10,000 active channels. Syndicate offers flexible searching and some interesting demographic and reliability statistics. For example, you can search for channels by language and locale, by RSS version, or by the software used to create the channel (Movable Type, Userland, and many more). As a community-driven site, it casts a very wide net, so you may have to work a little harder to find what you're looking for. NewsDesk will read all 10,000+ channels in the Syndic8 channel directory, but you will get better results if you filter their OCS Directory before downloading it.

There are several ways to get RSS channels into NewsDesk:

• Add the channel manually using the File | New Channel menu in NewsDesk
• Drag and drop the channel URL onto the NewsDesk
• Import an OCS Directory from one of the websites listed on this page

To add a channel manually:

1. Select a category in the tree view.
2. Choose the File | New Channel menu.
3. The New Channel window will appear. Enter the web address (URL).
4. Press the Add button.
5. NewsDesk will add the channel to your category and download the latest headlines

To add a channel using Drag and Drop:

1. Use any browser to navigate to the RSS URL.
2. Drag the URL from the browser address bar and drop it onto NewsDesk.
3. NewsDesk will prompt you to add this new channel to an existing category, or create a new category for it.
4. NewsDesk will download the channel's headlines and fill in the channel properties (title, description, format) automatically.

To import an OCS channel directory:

1. Open your internet browser on one of the OCS Channel Directory links on this page. These links take you to a page that describes the directory.
2. Find the link on that page for the OCS Directory file. These files typically have extensions like .ocs, .rdf, or .xml.
3. Click the link for the OCS Directory file to open it in your browser.
4. Choose your browser's File | Save As menu, then save the file on your computer.
5. Choose the File | Import menu in NewsDesk, then select the file you saved earlier.
6. NewsDesk will create a new category folder and load it with channels from the channel directory.