Good Shepherd
Podcasts and RSS Feeds

A podcast is a recorded, portable audio file, similar to a radio show. The word comes from combining the words iPod (a popular MP3 player from Apple) with broadcast. You can listen to podcasts online, through your favorite media player or download them to computers and portable devices. You can also subscribe to podcasts using an RSS feed for the podcast with a music program like iTunes or AT&T Yahoo! Music Engine. Subscribing allows the latest podcasts to be automatically downloaded to your portable device, like an MP3 player.

Good Shepherd currently provides podcasts of its services and sermons.

There are several ways to listen to Good Shepherd recordings (podcasts):

• From the Recorded Services and Sermons page, click on the link for a recording and let your browser's built-in media player play the file.
• You can download individual podcast recordings and play the .mp3 files on almost any music player (e.g., on an iPod or using Windows Media Player).
• Finally, you can subscribe to Good Shepherd podcasts to make sure your music software and portable device always has the latest recordings.

Like many people, you probably have various web sites that you visit regularly. However, there may be sites that you find interesting, but you don't visit them very often because they don't change very often. What if you could be notified automatically when such changes do occur? What if, instead of you visiting the site to see what's changed, the site could tell you when something has changed? What if you could tell, at a glance, which of the 30 sites on your bookmark list have had any changes?

Syndication is the act of selling an article for publication in many magazines or newspapers at the same time. The comics you read in the newspaper are syndicated. The news articles that come from the Associated Press or Reuters are syndicated. Web syndication works in a similar fashion, but instead of comics or news articles being offered, a variety of media objects can be made available.

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. Using RSS has been described as having "an inbox for the Internet", and using an RSS feed is similar to using email. However, instead of an email reader you need an RSS reader. Subscribe once to one of our RSS feeds, and you will automatically receive those news items from Good Shepherd.

RSS uses a variety of file formats, of which Atom is the latest version. Using RSS enables Good Shepherd-related news to be sent directly to you using standard Web-based technologies. For a more detailed description of RSS, please refer to these Wikipedia articles on Web Syndication, RSS and Atom, or this article or this article or this article.

If you would like to receive Good Shepherd news using RSS, you need to subscribe to one of our newsfeeds; this requires an RSS reader. Many email readers already have built-in support for RSS, including Mozilla Thunderbird and Internet Explorer version 7. You can download and install an RSS reader, or create an account on a Web site that provides RSS reader functionality (such as Google and My Yahoo!). Some web browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, have built-in support for RSS feeds. (Drag the icon at the end of the URL onto your personal toolbar.) There are also add-on packages available for Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer to add RSS reading capabilities. A list of available RSS readers can be viewed here.

Once you have chosen an RSS reader, you must subscribe to one of the Good Shepherd RSS feeds. You can do this by clicking the orange or button above and noting the URL; this is the XML address that you need to enter into your reader to subscribe. Some RSS readers allow you to drag the or and drop it onto a particular location. Follow the instructions for your particular news reader, and then add this URL wherever it asks for the location of the service to which you wish to subscribe.

Please refer to your chosen news reader's documentation for specific instructions for subscribing and unsubscribing to RSS and Atom Feeds.