Subscribing to RSS Feeds and Blogs

Much like Firefox supports RSS feeds using live bookmarks, Thunderbird supports them as folders in which each news item is an item in the RSS folder. To set up a RSS account to read RSS feeds, you must first create an RSS account:

1.	Click Account Settings in the Thunderbird Tools menu.
2.	Select Add Account, RSS News and Blogs, Next.
3.	Give the account an account name. (Make the name as descriptive as possible.) Click Next and then click Finish.

After you have created your RSS account, select it and click the Manage Subscriptions button. In the RSS Subscriptions window, click Add to add a new feed. You must provide the RSS URL for example, the CBS News top stories RSS feed's URL is http://www.cbsnews.com/feeds/rss/main.rss.

After you're done, you will have a main folder, News and Blogs, containing a folder for each feed you added in the RSS Subscriptions window. Blogs are added in the same manner; an example is http://www.achievo.org/blog/feeds/categories/2-Tips-n-Tricks.rss, which is a blog feed for tips and tricks. Be careful, though, because this stuff can be addictive and fun.

Podcasting

Thunderbird 1.5 has support for podcasting (a good reason to upgrade if you haven't already). With podcasting, you can retrieve audio RSS content and send it to devices such as the Apple iPod.

OPML

Users of Thunderbird can use OPML to import (and export) RSS feed information with Thunderbird. This feature makes migration from another RSS client program much easier. A search of the Internet will find many OPML files, and even OPML editors to make modifying an OPML file easy.