Zeitgeist - the new Blather news service

A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Welcome to Zeitgeist - the new, free Blather news service. Our mission: to illuminate the seedier, murkier corners of the internet and generally make the world a poorer place..

**what is it?**

Regular visitors to the site will be familiar with Shi*egeist – the editorial, opinion based section of blather.net. This is where the bulk of our articles, whether they be about politics, frog falls, Armageddon, music or Bobby Darin, appear. Shi*egeist is now written by over ten contributors, from both sides of the Atlantic and regularly perused by tens of thousands of disgruntled cranks and lunatics everywhere. Bitchin!

However, we’ve decided to upgrade the site and bring some new areas to life - the first of which is Zeitgeist. This is a free news service which will bring you hourly updates, collecting and pooling anything odd, other, left or just generally wrong that’s going down somewhere on this planet of ours. It's our intention to provide you - the great unwashed - with the world's leading Fortean new service. For free. Kickin!

**how do I use it?**

Glad you asked. You have two options. The first is very simple – just visit the site whenever you want. There’ll be some new news for you to have a pike at. The second option involves using something called an RSS/XML feed…

**what the fu*k is an RSS/XML feed?**

Again, glad you asked. This is actually a lot more straightforward than it sounds. Basically, you download a small piece of technology called a ‘feedreader’ to your computer.

Some of us use the free reader which you can get over at feedreader.com. It's not let us down so far. There are some alternatives that you can choose from, such as Opera and NetNewsWire if you use a Mac. The choice of feedreader is yours.
Here's more about RSS and readers »

It shouldn’t take more than five minutes to download - with a good internet connection. If it takes longer, then frankly, we can’t help you. Sorry.

Now, turn it on.

With us so far? Grand. Now go to the main page of blather.net. In the section where the Zeitgeist links appear, you will be able to see a small orange button which has the following written on it: XML/RSS.

Ok – now click on it.

Don’t panic. You should now be looking at a whole load of funky looking code. Ignore it - it’s not important. What is important is the address which is currently sitting in the address bar of your internet browser. Select it and copy it. Got it? Groovy!.

Now go back to your spiffy new feedreader (the thing that you downloaded) and click on the thing that says ‘new feed’ or something like that (it differs in different feedreaders but it's not hard to figure out) and follow the instructions until the feedreader sets up the link for you.

If you have done this properly, the feedreader should suck down all the latest news entries on the Zeitgeist page. Hootenanny!

**it didn’t work for me and I now feel very stupid. What do I do?**

Nay worries. Since we are such nice people, we have obligingly provided you with the address that you need to stick in your feedreader. Here it is: http://www.blather.net/zeitgeist/index.xml

And as if that isn’t enough to send you into breakdance-like raptures of giddiness, you can also get Shi*egeist in your feedreader too. Here’s the address you need for that: http://www.blather.net/blather.xml

**why would I bother me arse?**

Well, the benefit of a feedreader is that it saves you the bother of having to go the blather.net homepage to get your news – not that we wanna put you off from visiting us – dear God no – but rather the news comes to you. Every time one of our intrepid blather monkeys posts a new news item, your little feedreader will whirr into action and download the story for you. Nifty!

Nice bunch, aren’t we?

Regards,

The blather.net team…