Back to Top

The RSS format

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<rss version="2.0">

  <channel>

    <title>Example Channel</title>

    <link>http://example.com/</link>

    <description>My example channel</description>

    <item>

       <title>News for September the Second</title>

       <link>http://example.com/2002/09/01</link>

       <description>other things happened today</description>

    </item>

    <item>

       <title>News for September the First</title>

       <link>http://example.com/2002/09/02</link>

    </item>

  </channel>

</rss>

RSS Readers

These aggregators come in two types: software that you download, and online aggregators. One of the most popular online aggregators is Bloglines. Aggregator software that runs on your own computer may be a standalone program or integrate into a program that you already use, such as Microsoft Outlook and the Mozilla browser. Most (but certainly not all) RSS aggregators use a three-panel layout

There are many RSS aggregators, and three comprehensive lists of them can be found at Abbe Normal’s Weblog/Wiki, News Aggregators Directory, and Lockergnome’s RSS Resources. What aggregator you should use depends on your own needs.

Needs which differ include how many computers you use, how many feeds you read, how you’d like to read the feeds, etc. If, for example, you use multiple computers, then you probably want to use either an online aggregator such as Bloglines, or an aggregator that allows you to synchronize across multiple computers, such as NewsGator. Some people find it convenient to read RSS feeds in a program that they are already using. For example, My Yahoo! has an RSS module, and NewsGator integrates into Microsoft Outlook. Some people prefer an aggregator that shows new items as a news ticker on their desktop, and others prefer a full-fledged application to read RSS feeds in. I should also note that the aggregators mentioned on this page, with the exception of NewsGator, are all free to use, at the time of this writing.

Two types of aggregators:

Newspaper style

• Browser based
• Takes feeds from varioius locations and combines them into a single page
• Views: allows changed content to be detected. Items which have been previously shown but changed are typically not shown again. 

Newsreader style

• Rich/fat client
• Presents multilple views allowing one to see an overview of items and to select the ones that you want to see. Often these take a familiar three paned form, popular with mail readers.
• Views allows changed content to be detected. Items which have been previously shown but changed are typically updated

Subscribing to a Feed

There are roughly two ways to subscribe. One is to enter the URL of the RSS feed into your aggregator. The other is to follow a subscribe link from a web page; the problem with this is that practically every aggregator has a different way of doing this. So you might see links labeled as subscribe with Bloglines or add to My Yahoo!. Two services exist to deal with this problem: Syndication Subscription Service and quickSub, which was inspired by the former. Links labeled subscribe will take you to a page on the Syndication Subscription Service which itself contains direct links to subscribing using various aggregators. QuickSub is similar. Links to RSS feeds using the quickSub tool will popup a list of links to subscribing with various aggregators.

Very nice RSS aggregators will allow you to enter in the URL of a web page and it will then read its RSS feed. These tools support RSS auto-discovery. Most RSS aggregators, unfortunately, aren’t that nice; you’ll need to copy and paste the RSS URL into your aggregator.

Vacation Rental Homes. "All About RSS." FaganFinder. 19 Feb. 2004. Vacation
     Rental Homes. 24 Jan. 2006 <http://www.faganfinder.com/search/
     rss.shtml>.

O'Reilly Media, Inc. "How can I read RSS?" What is RSS? O'Reilly Media, Inc. 25
     Jan. 2006 http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html.

Back to Top

Search Engine Queries

A number of search engines allow you to view their search results in RSS format. This way, you can monitor the results for a subject that you are interested in. RSS-based search engines can be quite useful; their big advantage is that they index individual items rather than pages which may contain many items. There are several good general-purpose RSS-based search engines around today

Daypop

Daypop is a search engine (also available on Fagan Finder) for news, blogs, and RSS feeds (the last is powered by News Is Free). Perform a search, and the result has a link to its RSS feed at the top right of the page.

Feedster

Feedster is a search engine (also available on Fagan Finder) for RSS feeds. Perform a search, and the result has a link to its RSS feed at the top of the page.

BlogDigger

BlogDigger is a search engine (also available on Fagan Finder) for RSS feeds. Perform a search, and the result has a link to its RSS feed at the top right of the page.

Sherch

Sherch lists a number of tools and provides an RSS feed of the results. Unfortunately, it is an old website, and most do not work. Two significant ones that do work are the Internet Movie Database and the Open Directory Project. To use them, click on the link labeled “RSS 1.0 Channel” and add searchterm=[your search terms] to the end of the URL.

Amazon

Sean Nolan has used Amazon’s API to create RSS feeds. The URL for a feed is http://www.yaywastaken.com/amazon/amazon-rss.asp?keywords=[your search terms]

eBay

Use this tool to create a scraped feed of eBay search results. It is based on a script from waxy.org.

Back to Top

Topical Feeds

The Mail Archive

The Mail Archive includes about 2,500 mailing lists; you may be subscribed to one of them already. Search for a list, and click on one of the results. Add maillist.rdf to the URL, and you’ve got an RSS feed.

Yahoo! Groups

Yahoo! Groups is another source of mailing lists. Find a group by searching or browsing (only groups with public archives have feeds available). Then create the RSS feed by adding messages?rss=1 to the URL, to create a feed that looks like http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aggregators/messages?rss=1.

Moreover

Moreover provides RSS feeds for news on over 100 topics, and the news is collected from thousands of sources. This link goes to a listing of all the feeds and a link to their RSS feed.

Network54

Network54 contains forums on entertainment, sports, gaming, and society. Find forums by browsing the directory, and add ;XML=rss to the end of a forum URL to make it an RSS feed.

Blogging Headline News

Blogging Headline News aggregates the RSS feeds from many blogs, and organizes the items into dozens of topics. Each topic has an RSS feed. The topics are shown on the left of the page alphabetically, or you can also view them sorted by popularity.

The Internet Topic Exchange

The Internet Topic Exchange allows anyone to create a topic, and anyone to post items from their blog into that topic. Each topic is available in RSS. So browse the full list of topics, or the topic directory, which lists most of them. The Topic Exchange is currently small but growing every day. Spread the word!

Computing and Technology-Related Feeds

See Meerkat and Network World Fusion.

http://www.rssgov.com/rssworkshop.html

Back to Top

Blogs and Forums

Many, many blogs have RSS feeds, including blogs published using the popular software Movable Type and Radio UserLand. See Finding the RSS Feed for a Website above.

BlogMatrix

BlogMatrix provides RSS feeds for many blogs that do not have them. Use the search box and enter in the blog’s name.

LiveJournal and DeadJournal

LiveJournal and DeadJournal run over a million journals (blogs), and each is available in RSS. You can find journals by searching on LiveJournal or DeadJournal’s home page for user names or interests. For some searches you will need to be a registered user yourself. Alternately, you can find journals by using any search engine and limiting results to either livejournal.com or deadjournal.com. Once you have found a journal, just add /rss to the end of the URL. For example, http://www.livejournal.com/users/example_user/rss.

QuickTopic

QuickTopic allows anyone to create a topic, which is essentially a forum/bulletin board (although messages are in reverse-chronological order). Each topic is available in RSS, by adding .rss to the topic’s URL. It is generally used for discussions that you are already participating in, but you can find existing discussions by searching on any search engine and limiting your query to quicktopic.com. QuickTopic may have its own search engine in the future.

Blog Publishing Software

If you know that website example.com is published using Manila, then the RSS feed is example.com/xml/rss.xml. Blogs published with Movable Type have their RSS feeds located at example.com/index.xml and example.com/index.rdf (two versions of RSS, either should work in any aggregator).

see also myRSS below

Miscellaneous

GeoURL

GeoURL has a database of websites along with the physical location (latitude and longitude) that the website (or creator) lives in. Many, but not all of the websites are blogs. Click on the map, and you will see a listing of websites within 500 miles of the spot you choose. You can click on “recenter” beside any of those websites, or enter in a latitude, longitude, and radius (maximum distance from the point) at the bottom of the page. Just above that form on the bottom are links to RSS feeds for that page. One use for this would be for monitoring new websites that are near you.

SourceForge

SourceForge is a gigantic software development website, where thousands of open source projects are developed. SourceForge itself has a number of RSS feeds, as does every single project.

myRSS

myRSS allows you to create RSS feeds for websites that don’t already have them. The scraping isn’t perfect, but it works well for many sites. It is free, but only updates once a day and shows self advertising, unless you sponsor them. So, it would still be a good idea to e-mail the webmasters and ask them to create an RSS feed. People have already used myRSS to create lots of feeds: you can search, browse using DMOZ categories, and check out the top 100 RSS feeds by popularity.

Cool RSS Feeds

Airport Delays via RSS: http://www.pubsub.com/airports.php

Weather via RSS: http://www.rssweather.com/

Earthquake Notification via RSS: http://www.pubsub.com/earthquakes.php

Techbargains via RSS: http://www.techbargains.com/rss.xml

Word of the day via RSS:

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/wotd.rss

Ebay via RSS: http://www.rssauction.com/

Where is RSS Going?

Feedscast text to speech call in Rss reader

Feedscast delivers spoken web pages to your telephone so you get the news first, wherever you are. http://feedscast.com/

Shadows is a social bookmarking service for discovering, sharing and managing information on the web. Shadows supercharges this information with a "Shadow Page" — a community blog for any web page that includes views, ratings, tags, and comments by you, your friends and the Shadows community. http://www.shadows.com/features/site/help/whatisshadows.htm

Videora - The First Personal Video Downloading Program. Videora 2.0 is the latest version of our new personal video downloading program. Utilizing BitTorrent peer to peer technology and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, Videora automatically and intelligently finds and downloads video you want to watch. http://www.videora.com/en-us/

Do not be surprised to see the Blackboards and WebCTs out there beginning to add RSS tools to their systems. Consider what would happen if these course management systems could syndicate synopses of all course offerings or just the assignments I might be enrolled in. The same RSS aggregator I might use to stay in tune with news could also feed me a summary of my pending projects or assignments.

RSS is the first working example of an XML data network. As such, and in this world of learning objects and metadata files, RSS is the first working example of what such a network will look like for educational designers. Just as news resources are indexed and distributed in the RSS network, so also educational resources can be indexed and distributed in a similar learning object network.

The model provided by RSS is very different from the model provided today by learning content management systems (LCMSs). In the world of the LCMS, everything is contained in one very large software application. Insofar as content is distributed at all, it is distributed in bundled content libraries. This means that educational institutions must make a major investment in software and expertise in order to access learning content.

RSS, by contrast, is not centralized. It is distributed. Content is not distributed in bundles, it is distributed one item at a time. There is no central store, repository or library of RSS content; it is all over the internet. To access and use RSS content in a viewer or in a web page, you do not need a large software application. A simple RSS reader will do the trick.

For this reason, the distribution of educational content over the internet will look a lot more like an RSS network than it will an enterprise content management system. Many more people will use a distributed learning object network not only because it’s easier and cheaper, but because they can access much more content for much less money.

As a result, the concept of syndicated educational content can really come into play. While there will always be a need for reusable learning objects (RLOs), anything that can have an educational application – including images, videos, journal articles, even news items – can be distributed through a learning object syndication network.

http://www.downes.ca/files/RSS_Educ.htm

Back to Top

Publishing Your Feed

There are a number of ways to generate a feed from your content. First of all, explore your content management system - it might already have an option to generate an RSS feed.

If that option isn’t available, you have a number of choices;

·                        Self-scraping — The easiest way to publish a feed from existing content. Scraping tools fetch your Web page and pull out the relevant parts for the feed, so that you don’t have to change your publishing system. Some use regular expressions or XPath expressions, while others require you to mark up your page with minimal hints (usually using <div> or <span> tags) that help it decide what should be put into the feed.

·                        Feed integration — If your site is dynamically generated (using languages like Perl, Python or PHP), it may have a RSS library available, so that you can integrate the feed into your publishing process.

·                        Starting with the feed — Alternatively, you can manage the list-oriented parts of your content in the RSS feed itself, and generate your Web pages (as well as other content, like e-mail lists) from the feed. This has the advantage of always having the correct information in the feed, and tools like XSLT make this option easy, especially if you’re starting from scratch.

·                        Third party scraping — If none of these options work for you, some people on the Web will scrape your site for you and make the feed available. Be warned, however, that this is never as reliable or accurate as doing it yourself, because they don’t know the details of your content or your system. Also, using third parties introduces another point of failure in the delivery process; problems there (network, server or business) will cause your feed to be unavailable.

This is an incomplete list of tools for creating feeds and checking them to make sure that you’ve done so correctly.

·        Tristana Writer http://www.tristana.org/download

·        ListGarden RSS Feed including Podcasting Generator Program -  http://www.softwaregarden.com/products/listgarden/