If you’re using the RSS Visualizer screensaver in Tiger, you’ll see a list of all the RSS feeds that you’ve bookmarked in Safari. In Leopard, you can even type in the address of an RSS feed.

I was playing with the different screensavers in System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver, and I stumbled upon the fascinating RSS Visualizer. But how can I change it so that it shows me a different RSS feed than Apple Hot News?

The RSS Visualizer screensaver streams the current headlines from any RSS feed, and you can visit a specific news story by typing the number that’s displayed at the bottom of each headline. To set the options, go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver and click the Screen Saver tab. Choose RSS Visualizer and then click the Options button on the right. In Leopard, all you have to do is type in the address of the RSS feed that you want to use. In Tiger, the trick is that you have to bookmark the RSS feed in Safari before it shows up as an option.

Note that the address of an RSS feed is different from the website’s main address, and not all websites have RSS feeds. To find the address of an RSS feed, visit a website in Safari and see if a blue RSS icon shows up on the right-hand side of the address bar. If so, click on this icon to get to the RSS feed page. That’s the address that you should use or bookmark.

If no blue RSS icon shows up at all, you’re not necessarily out of luck. Some popular websites, such as the Los Angeles Times (www.latimes.com) and Newsweek (www.newsweek.com), list their RSS feeds on a completely separate page, so be sure to check the site thoroughly.