Vacation Rentals in Kauai, Maui, Oahu & the Big Island of Hawaii

What is RSS and how can I use it?

What is RSS?

RSS is an easy way for you to keep updated automatically on websites that interest you. Instead of having to visit the websites to see if new articles or content is available you can use RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication) and get told every time they have something new.
VacationRental-Hawaii now has an RSS feed for all of it's Vacation Rentals, so renters can be informed instantly when new listings or new offers are made. At the moment we only have one feed for all of Hawaii, but will soon break it up into a separate feed for every Island plus the current one for all of Hawaii. A thumbnail image is included with every listing in the RSS feed, and all but the most basic readers will show it.

How can I make use of RSS?

There are a number of ways you can make use of RSS: you can download a program called a News Reader which displays RSS Feed information, you can use a web based RSS Reader or you can use the built in RSS Features of Mozilla Firefox internet browser.
All you then have to do is decide which RSS feeds interest you, for instance an RSS feed of all the latest Hawaii Vacation Rental Listings from VacationRental-Hawaii.com & an RSS feed of all the latest News from Yahoo, and then subscribe to these feeds.

How do I get a News Reader?

There are lots of News Readers available for downloading, some are free and some charge a small licence fee. A search in your favorite search engine for "News Reader download" will bring up quite a few (add 'Free' to the search if you want to limit what you find to what is offered at no charge). Some we can recommend are: SharpReader (Free Windows download), FeedDemon (Small Licence Fee download), NewsGator (Small licence fee – integrates into Outlook), NewsMac (Free Mac OS X download) & NewsFire (Free Mac OS X download). Follow the link to these websites for instructions on how to download and install.

SharpReader	http://www.sharpreader.net/
FeedDemon	http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/
NewsGator	http://www.newsgator.com/
NewsMac	http://www.thinkmac.co.uk/newsmac/
NewsFire	http://www.newsfirerss.com/

How do I use RSS in Mozilla Firefox?

If you are using Mozilla Firefox as your internet browser you will see this icon: on the bottom right corner of the browser when RSS feeds are available (RSS Feeds are called Live Bookmarks in Mozilla).

Clicking on the icon will display a list of feeds that you can subscribe to; clicking on a feed will add the feed to your Bookmarks. These live bookmarks can be viewed at anytime and display a summary of the latest feed information without having to browse to the website.

How do I use RSS with a News Reader?

The method varies according to which News Reader package you have installed eg: To add an RSS feed to your SharpReader News Reader copy the link from the relevant icon and paste it into the address field in SharpReader (For windows Internet Explorer users, right-click on the icon and select “copy shortcut”), then click the “subscribe” button.

When I click on the button all I see is coloured XML code?

To view the RSS feeds in a legible format you have to use an RSS Reader or Mozilla browser as explained above.

How do I find RSS feeds?

Websites which have an RSS feed will ordinarily have a small logo with RSS or XML on it. The logo should have the link you can use to add the feed to your reader, and how to add the link will vary according to your reader. There are also search engines devoted to just finding RSS feeds. We have one here for your convenience, just put in your keywords, and you will find RSS feeds which contain content relating to them. Remember though, you need a reader in order to view the feeds you find here.