I'm glad the RSS feed functionality is getting some good use.
For those unfamiliar with RSS, here are a few ways to use it.
Some of the things you can do with RSS:
1) The simplest, is to just bookmark PetraH's link and when you revisit, all the matching loans display on the page when using a browser that can read RSS (it is not a saved list of loans, but a saved search, as new loans come in and others get funded the results will change). Internet Explorer and FireFox do a good job at that.
2) In FireFox if you make it into a "Live Bookmark" and put the button on the toolbar, when you click it, it will show you a drop down menu of all the matching loans and clicking them will take you to the kiva page for the borrower. You can also just make it a folder in your list of bookmarks where all the links under it are getting automatically updated as new loans come in or stop fundraising.
3) Subscribe to the feed: There are many RSS readers out there. You can either use the capabilities built into most modern browsers, or subscribe to it through Google Reader, iGoogle, MyYahoo!, Bloglines, MS Outlook, etc and each matching loan will show up as an "article" under that feed. For example, I use Google Reader and subscribe to several different kivabank RSS feeds I've created and then organize them all into one folder. Then, you can either view the individual RSS feeds or click on the folder and you get a combined view of all the results for all of the searches. If you use iGoogle, you can have one of the widgets on your homepage automatically populated with loans that match your search.
4) Incorporate the feeds into your blog. Let's say you have a blog about widows with children seeking loans on kiva. You can create a search with keywords "description(+widow,mother,child)" and the results will have loans where the description *must* contain "widow" and must either contain "mother" or "child" (also finds "children" since it's doing partial word matching). Then you can add the RSS feed as a block/widget in your blog so that any current matching loans automatically show up down a side panel in your blog and automatically remain current.
RSS is the common language that many sites can speak in and there are many programs and other sites that know how to read it and can display it in different ways that are the most convenient and helpful for you. RSS has become the #1 most popular way to exchange data between sites and for browsers to have automatically updating links. Google has an RSS Slide Show where it will display the KivaBank loan results:
Safe Group Loans Slide Show.
KivaBank lets you create your own RSS feeds (that only the creator can alter) and you can either use it just for yourself, or as PetraH has, share the link with others looking for the same type of loans who don't need to have a KivaBank account or have Silverlight installed (or have ever even gone to KivaBank before).
