Finding Feeds
These days almost all web sites that provide changing news or information provide a link for one or more news feeds. News sites often give a choice of many feeds targeting different interests, such as local/regional news, breaking news, most read, fashion, entertainment, etc. Technically oriented sites also offer multiple feeds for special interests, such as mobile news, PCs, science, software, etc. With the wealth of RSS and Atom feeds available, sometimes the hardest part is deciding which ones you want.
With the release of version 2.0, multiFEED adds a powerful new tool for finding and subscribing to RSS and Atom feeds. The FeedFinder allows you to search and browse with a familiar web browser interface, but unlike the full BlackBerry 10 browser, FeedFinder will automatically detect advertised feeds when you load a page that contains them and give you the option to choose one and subscribe to it. You can also navigate the FeedFinder to any RSS/Atom XML URL and subscribe with a simple tap.
FeedFinder should meet almost all your RSS and Atom feed subscription needs, but in the rare case that it doesn't you can use one of the following alternate methods for locating and subscribing to feeds.
Even when you are on a web site with links to RSS/Atom feeds, they can be hard to spot sometimes, but most modern desktop browsers have RSS feed detection built in:
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Click on the Tools menu and select Feed Discovery. If there are RSS or Atom feeds available on the page, a list of them will pop up and you can choose the one you want. Once you get there copy the URL from the navigation bar into multiFEED.
FireFox
Click on the Bookmarks menu and select Subscribe to This Page. If there are RSS or Atom feeds available on the page, a list of them will pop up and you can choose the one you want. Once you get there copy the URL from the navigation bar into multiFEED.
Opera
If there are RSS or Atom feeds available on the page, an RSS icon will appear at the right end of the navigation bar. Click it and a list of feeds will pop up and you can choose the one you want. If there is only one available clicking on the icon will take you straight to it. Once you get there copy the URL from the navigation bar into multiFEED.
Chrome
Chrome does not have native feed detection built in, but this feature can be added with a plugin. Unfortunately, although all such extensions function much like the RSS feature in Opera, none of them reveal the feed URL to the user in a way that can be copied into multiFEED. Unless this situation changes Chrome is not recommended for feed detection while browsing.
Feed Search Engines and Directories
Sometimes you don't know who publishes feeds for the subject you are interested in. This is where feed search engines and directories come in. Here are a few, without endorsement, and in no particular order:
Unfortunately these services seem to come and go without warning, so these links may not work when you try them.
If you know the web site you want to get feeds from, but you can't find them on the site, Google Search can often help. Simply enter the name of the site and "RSS" as keywords. If there are any feeds available on the site, Google will usually return a link to the subscription within the first couple of results. For instance, to find the RSS subscription page for Engadget enter "Engadget RSS" into Google Search. One of the results is entitled "Rss Articles on Engadget". Clicking on this result takes you to an HTML representation of the feed. Near the top-right of the page there is an orange Subscribe button with the RSS icon. The link attached to this button is the URL of the feed XML so you can just copy that into multiFEED. In other cases the Google result will take you directly to the XML URL. In this case just copy the URL from the navigation bar.
Some sites provide both RSS and Atom versions of their feeds. Given the inherent superiority of Atom, always use the URL for the Atom feed when given a choice.