Rss

Bit weird posting this on a blog, where everyone knows about syndication, but what the hell, this is a semitech article:




RSS is the standard mode of web syndication – that is keeping other sites updated with content from web pages with frequent updates. This is commonly used by blogs, podcasts and news websites. While third party sites use RSS feeds to keep people updated with relevant information, the most common use is by feedreaders and aggregators. This means that instead of visiting all the blogs and news sites that you frequently read, or using bookmarks over and over, you can simply go through your favorites from one website or program. Basically RSS feeds supersimplifies the process of keeping yourself updated with blogs, forums, news, vlogs and podcasts.



Should have probably said what RSS stands for by now – Rich Site Summary – not that it really tells you anything, but now you can show off to people who think it stands for Really Simply Syndication, which is so common a usage that it is also half true. Just realized that full forms are absolutely useless.




My spaces



My Yahoo! Or My MSN spaces of the web are the easiest way of using syndication. Most websites that use feeds have an 'add to My Yahoo!' or 'add to My MSN' buttons, that you simply need to click. If these websites don't have the buttons, you copy paste their feed address into the 'add content' link in your space. The feed address is available when you click on any one of these two familiar buttons – the orange broadcast square or the orange RSS rectangle. All the other features of the service that you use apply, this means formatting and positioning the content on the page. By adding a number of sources in your space, you do not need to wade your way through individual webpages in turn, and can browse through the websites you regularly visit from one place.



You can also create a custom feed by feeding in a search term, like "technology" or "Cricket India". Any updates related to the search term gets automatically syndicated and added to your space.



Yahoo! Offers an innovative service of feed/blog alert beta (don't worry about the beta, that's just an excuse for the probable bugs in the service, and an easy way to get customer feedback). Feed/blog alert sends a message to your IM, to your inbox or even your mobile phone whenever a website you are keeping track of gets updated. Pretty convenient eh? This means that every time a friend updates his or her blog, you get to know of it in real time!





Aggregators



Aggregators are basically third party sites or programs that keep track of feeds. These are also called newsreaders and feedreaders. There are two kinds of aggregators, web based aggregators and desktop aggregators. Services discussed here are all free of spam, free of adware and free of cost.





i) Web based aggregators: Like My Yahoo! or MY MSN, web based aggregators provide an online information space where you can read an accumulation of syndicated content. Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) is a popular service that not only allows you to gather content in a very simple to use and customizable directory structure (categorize different feeds in different directories), but also lets you share your feeds with others. That way other people can read what YOU are interested in. This service also automatically detects RSS feeds if you simply type in the url of the website. Google has a feedreader service too, called google reader (and again) beta (http://www.google.com/reader). It has a simple interface, with brief summaries of feeds available in rows, a no-nonsense navigation, and an option to keep track of your favorites amongst your favorites with a star (the same gmail one). Feedreader (http://www.feedreader.net) is another good online service. Some online aggregators have preselected feeds and do not let you customize them. These are basically websites which keep you updated with relevant information from various sources. Take for example http://www.indianews.infoindia.in/, which is an aggregator of all India-related news.





ii) Desktop aggregators: Feedreader from http://www.feedreader.com/ is a three and a half megs download. A highly configurable feedreader, you can organize your feeds in a directory structure. Not much different from using Microsoft explorer. Snarfer from http://www.snarfware.com is another popular offline feedreader, and is just a 250 kb download. Comes preloaded with a lot of popular feeds, so you know whats in and what to read right away. Highly recommended. Another good feedreader is feed explorer from http://www.feedexplorer.net/. Has a nice tabbed interface, and an integrated search feature. Some feedreaders you have to pay for come bundled with powerful features such as directly updating your ipods with podcasts and automatically printing out updates.



Linux users will like the simple rawdog newsreader available from http://offog.org/code/rawdog.html.





Web Browsers



Browsers like Opera, Firefox and Safari have built-in feed reading capabilities. These are easily customizable, and websites with feeds are automatically detected with the orange icon appearing in the address bar, and an option to "add live bookmark". This means that your browser can update you when the website is updated, unfortunately the more popular browsers do not have this feature. If you do not want to get involved with all the messy business of tracking RSS feeds and using them in aggregators, then Opera and Firefox allow you to end up with the same results anyway by opening a bunch of bookmarks together. Save all the sites that you visit regularly in one bookmark folder, and then open it as a group or opt to open the group automatically every time the browser starts.





Your feeds



Have a weblog? In a band and want to start a podcast? (Bodhi Tree's blog acts as one: http://xlkikudiyan.blogspot.com/) Want to syndicate your content? Well, all blogs service automatically generate syndicated content in both RSS and Atom formats, but you can make it easier for regular visitors to use the feeds by adding RSS button to your blog. Adding the "add to my yahoo!" or "feedreader" buttons, will be an added advantage. To do this, visit the website of the aggregator you want to add a button to, and follow the instructions. It will usually be a simple block of coding that you will have to copy paste into your sidebar. Don't worry, it's a pretty simple trick.





There are many kinds of RSS variants for web syndication as well as the XML and Atom formats. Most of this article applies for these kinds of syndication as well, and you can use the newsreaders, aggregators and websites with these formats.