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IDS Web Channels
The IDS website offers many services and features to keep you up to date with our research, news and analysis, events and publications. Below is a summary of the social media or 'web 2.0' technologies this site features and how you can use them to follow us.
Facebook for social networking
Mixcloud for audio and podcasts
Netvibes for your RSS feed reader
RSS feeds for regular updates on news, events etc
SlideShare for event and seminar presentations
Twitter for forthcoming developments and commentary
Facebook is one of the most popular social networking websites where friends, family and colleagues can communicate and share content. Why not become a fan of IDS and receive all the latest updates through this popular social space.
Flickr Photos
Flickr is the photo sharing and social network website and from time to time, IDS may share its photos taken at events etc.
Mixcloud
Mixcloud is a relatively new service for storing and distributing audio recordings and podcasts. You will find all the latest recordings from interviews, seminars and podcasts. If you are a blogger or have your own website you can embed the Mixcloud player or share it amongst your online community via Twitter or Facebook.
Netvibes
We've put together a selection of our favourite, inspiring blogs, all our multimedia feeds like videos, podcasts and slideshows, and all the news and events associated with IDS on to one public website. Technically, IDS on Netvibes is an RSS reader service which allows you to view all your favourite website feeds in one place. The web service provided offers all the web channels IDS adds content to. Netvibes is a free service which anyone can create their own news website with only one place to visit for all the news updates you need - a real time saver. There is also additional web 'widgets' that can be added to your Netvibes page such as weather forecasts, travel updates, train timetables, videos etc.
RSS feeds
Newsfeeds, also called web feeds or RSS feeds, allows parts of a website to be made available to other websites or individual subscribers. Content from the source site appears on your own website or in your newsreader (software that allows you to pick up and organise RSS content). When the content on the source site is updated, it is also automatically updated on your website or in your newsreader.
Newsfeeds are often labelled as XML or RSS or using the symbol on the right.
How you can receive RSS Newsfeeds
As an individual user you can receive and organise newsfeeds with a "newsreader" (sometimes also called an "aggregator"), a piece of software that collects, manages and displays feeds. Some newsreaders display content in a window or list view similar to any email-programme, others have browser-based interfaces. Newsreaders can also be built into web browsers, e-mail programmes (Outlook 2007), etc. Most readers can be downloaded from the internet, some free of charge, some have to be purchased.
Once the newsreader has been installed, you simply have to pick the newsfeeds that you want to receive. Most websites providing feeds, mark their feeds "RSS" or "XML" or with a bright orange button (see above), so they can be recognised easily.
By receiving newsfeeds you will always be updated automatically with the latest content from the websites you have chosen to monitor. This means you should spend less time surfing the internet as the content comes to you rather than you having to go to find it yourself. Unlike subscribing to e-mail newsletters, there is no need to provide your email address, which means RSS is more private and secure and cannot be used as a spam channel.
IDS News, Events, Publications and Multimedia available as an RSS feed
IDS offers a Newsfeed service for its latest news and commentary, its events, the latest publications and both audio and video updates which can be easily subscribed to. Click on the links below or copy and paste the link into your RSS reader.
IDS Publications (only those titles published by IDS)
IDS Bookshop (latest publications available from the IDS Bookshop)
IDS Bookshop and IDS Publications (combination of the above two feeds)
If experience any problems, please email the Web Editor.
SlideShare
SlideShare is the presentation sharing website that IDS uploads its latest seminar and event presentations. Usually in PowerPoint format, visitors can search for any subject to find presentations, reference them, embed them in their own website and even comment on them.
Twitter is a micro-blogging service which allows IDS to send status updates, commentary on development issues and announce forthcoming events, publications and news to our users. If you have a Twitter account you can subscribe to our feed.
YouTube video
YouTube is our current internet television channel for video content. Some of our news stories and events will feature embedded videos which you can share with like-minded colleagues either by email, bookmarking or by embedding them into your blog or website.



