Syndication
Handout for trainees
- Needs editing, elaboration, move around text.
- First write abbreviation in full.
- Learning objectives!!!? Process, exercises, what are the needs of your trainees, assessment before (and after) this training.
- Judith add source information for the explanatory text.
Content Syndication, aggregation and RSS
If you have a list of web sites you browse daily for updates, whether they’re stored in your bookmarks or your head, you may want to check regularly if there are any updates available. If you find yourself loading many sites a day, and you notice that some stop updating frequently, you will inevitably stop checking them.
But there is another way to do this: you can have your list of bookmarks notify you when the sites you read have been updated. You wouldn’t waste time checking those that haven’t.
Syndication provides the tools to do this. Syndication is the process of using RSS/Atom for automated updates, another way of getting the information you want.
A news reader, or aggregator as they’re also known, is a program or a web site that automatically checks your list of bookmarks (which you only have to set up once) and lets you know what’s new on each site in your list.
What is RSS?
The RSS abbreviation is variously used to refer to the following standards:
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
• RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
RSS is a useful tool for keeping updated on your favorite websites. RSS makes use of an XML code that constantly scans the content of a website for updates and then broadcasts those updates to all subscribers through a feed.
RSS feeds are typically used with news sites or blogs, although any website can use them to disseminate information. When an update is sent out, it includes a headline and a small amount of text, either a summary or the lead-in to the larger story. You will need to click a link to read more.
In order to receive RSS feeds, you must have an aggregator, a feed reader.
Aggregators or news readers
Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites of interest for updates, creating a unique information space or "personal newspaper." An aggregator is able to subscribe to a feed, check for new content at user-determined intervals, and retrieve the content. The content is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the subscriber, as opposed to "pushed" with email or IM. Unlike recipients of some "pushed" information, the aggregator user can easily unsubscribe from a feed.
An aggregator or news aggregator is a type of software that retrieves syndicated Web content that is supplied in the form of a web feed (RSS, Atom and other XML formats), and that are published by weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites.
As an analogy, the news reader acts like a customizable newspaper. You can pull a variety of content from a growing number of sources into one place, to be read however you choose. Sources like major news media outlets (BBC, Reuters, Washington Post) to non-news content providers (Apple’s iTunes Music Store, the Government of Canada, USGS’ World Earthquake updates) to smaller independent voices (BoingBoing, VanEats, Sidesh0w). The only stipulation is that the source must provide a feed.
There are a number of aggregators online, many of them free. In addition to being available on your computer, RSS feeds can also be read on PDAs and cell phones. Aggregator features are gradually being built into portal sites such as My Yahoo! and Google; Web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera; e-mail programs like Mozilla Thunderbird; and other applications, including Apple's iTunes, which serves as a podcast aggregator.
The aggregator provides a consolidated view of the content in a single browser display or desktop application. Such applications are also referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators or news readers, although in Internet communication, the last of these terms was first used for programs that read Usenet newsgroups.
A website may incorporate aggregator features by republishing syndicated content on one or more of its pages. Aggregator features also may be incorporated in other client software, including Web browsers, e-mail clients, weblog creation programs, or media player programs. Devices such as mobile phones or Tivo video recorders (already aggregating television programs) may incorporate XML aggregators.
The syndicated content an aggregator will retrieve and interpret is usually supplied in the form of RSS or other XML-formatted data, such as RDF/XML or Atom.
When you come across a website you would like to add to your aggregator, you can do so in one of two ways. Most sites that offer an RSS feed have an "RSS" or "XML" button on their homepage that you can click on and it will instantly add that feed to your aggregator. Depending on your aggregator, you may instead need to copy and paste the URL of the feed into the program.
By either method, the feed will be available as soon as you've added it, and your next update could arrive in seconds. If you ever decide that you don't want to receive updates anymore, you simply delete the feed or URL from your aggregator.
Perhaps you already receive information on website updates through some sort of e-mail newsletter. RSS feeds are preferable to newsletter updates because they are instantaneous; you don't have to wait until a designated day of the week to receive your summary. They will also never be held up by a spam filter.
RSS feeds are used daily by people who realize the convenience of up-to-the-minute news and reports and the time they can save reading only those updates that interest them, and they look to become even more popular in the future.
With the new way the web is offering tools for easy content production for practically everyone, the number of information sources is growing exponentially. More and more people have the desire to narrow down and specify the information they find on the web. They want to cut down the time they spend on looking for news updates on each of these online sources. Also with the information overload (many people publishing) people would like to narrow down the news to only those items regarding the topic of their interest.
With syndication, there is a way of dealing with these issues. Internet content used to mainly exist out of HTML. This is only a basic markup. With XML (currently used more and more to publish content on internet) one can create separate ‘tags’ that define the content (title, description, date, author, etcetera). XML content provided in these this format can be published in several ways.
This makes it possible to subscribe on content that is being provided. People can subscribe on a source or / and on a specific channel within that sources (specific content tags) ….
Why should you use RSS?
- RSS makes it easy to read the Web
- RSS makes it easy to find relevant information
- RSS lets you share the information you get
- RSS helps you participate in conversations relevant to your work
- RSS makes it easier to control your own subscriptions
- RSS allows people to share your content
- RSS makes it easy for others to lend you a bit of their Web real estate
- It's easy to avoid being a spammer
- RSS makes it easy to contribute to Web-wide conversations
- It's only just beginning
What are the challenges of using RSS?
- Unreliable: Technically (server support) & content (reliant on updates)
*
RSS = Really Simple Syndication
File extension:
.rss, .xml
MIME type:
application/rss+xml
Type of format: Syndication
Extended from: XML
What is a Web feed?
A web feed is a document (often XML-based) which contains content items, often summaries of stories or weblog posts with web links to longer versions. Weblogs and news websites are common sources for web feeds, but feeds are also used to deliver structured information ranging from weather data to "top ten" lists of hit tunes. The two main web feed formats are RSS (which is older and far more widely used) and Atom (a newer format that has just completed the IETF standardization process.)
The terms "publishing a feed" and syndication are used to describe making available a feed for an information source, such as a blog. Like syndicated print newspaper features or broadcast programs, web feed contents may be shared and republished by other web sites. (For that reason, one popular definition of RSS is Really Simple Syndication.)
More often, feeds are subscribed to directly by users with aggregators or feed readers, which combine the contents of multiple web feeds for display on a single screen or series of screens. As of 2006, the latest advance in this area is the appearance of web browsers incorporating aggregator features. Depending on the aggregator, subscription is done by manually entering the URL of a feed, by clicking a link in a web browser or by various other methods.
Web feeds are designed to be machine readable, so there is no requirement that they be destined only for human readers. For example, business partners could use web feeds to exchange sales data or other information without any human intervention.
The two main web feed formats are RSS (which is older and far more widely used) and Atom (a newer format that has just completed the IETF standardization process.)
Atom, from a technical perspective, is an open standard that includes both:
an XML-based web syndication format used by weblogs, news websites and web mail and,
an HTTP-based protocol for remote editing of Atom-based weblogs.
RSS/XML/Atom are technologies, but syndication is a process. RSS and Atom are two flavours of what is more or less the same thing: a ‘feed’ which is a wrapper for pieces of regularly and sequentially-updated content, be they news articles, weblog posts, a series of photographs, and more. For the purposes of this article, consider the terms interchangable. XML is the base technology both are built on, but that’s almost totally irrelevant; the orange buttons are mislabelled, and should read ‘RSS’ or ‘Atom’ instead.
Definition
What type of content can be in this feed? Text, images, audio, video?
What type of RSS feeds are being provided?
- newly added items on blogs,
There are three generally accepted RSS revisions for creating feeds: RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92 and RSS 2.0. Any recent RSS feed reader should be able to read all three types properly. There are also several more standards which are somewhere in-between these three.
RSS 0.91 is the simplest form and the easiest to understand. It is also the most limited for a number of reasons. RSS 0.91 provides only a basic set of features, allows a maximum of 15 items in any single feed, limits the length of the text used in titles and descriptions to 100 and 500 characters respectively. HTML cannot be used in the descriptions of items in RSS 0.91, as the specification supports plain text only. RSS 0.91 is a very rigid form, in that each item will have a single link, a title and possibly a description, with no variations allowed in this pattern.
RSS 0.92 represents an extension of RSS 0.91. It removes a lot of the restrictions of the previous version and adds support for HTML code to the 'description' section of items. Items no longer need to have a title or link, as the description can now be used as both title and link if desired. The addition of an optional 'enclosure' tag allows an RSS 0.92 feed to contain files which are downloaded by the user along with the item. All the length restrictions of the various text fields that were present in RSS 0.91 are removed in RSS 0.92.
RSS 2.0 is a different branch of the RSS 'tree' than RSS 0.92, though it also originates in RSS 0.91. It supports all of the additions made by RSS 0.92, and adds a few new wrinkles like support for secure sites, GUIDs, feed categorizing, etc. A full description can be found here.
There are different types of feeds sources available. Like mentioned before, feeds can be provided e.g. from:
- news sites (like BBC - http://iaald.blogspot.com/http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedfactory/feedfinder.shtml , CNN - http://iaald.blogspotwww.cnn.com/atom.xmlservices/rss/
- social bookmarking services
See screendump delicious.jpg
- search engine results e.g. Google , but also news papers like http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=food+security&ie=UTF-8&output=rsshttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/rss/index.html screendump googlenews.jpg
- Podcasts
- Wiki (changes to pages)
- )
- blogs (like
- search engines (line Google - http://news.google.com/intl/en_us/news_feed_terms.html, Yahoo - http://news.yahoo.com/rss)
- databases (like Eldis - http://www.eldis.org/newsscript/select.htm, http://www.amaxa.com/rss.html, Weather - http://www.weather.gov/rss/)
- newly added items on blogs, social bookmarking services,
- search engine results e.g. Google
- Database output e.g. Eldis
http://www.eldis.org/newsscript/select.htm
screendump eldis.jpg
- table of contents of journals
see screendump ingenta.jpg
- Additionally, e-mail subscriptions on mailing lists or newsletters can be converted to an RSS feed (e.g. in Bloglines).
How can I find a feed?
You can ask Google to find an rss feed by adding “filetype:rss” to your search result. So for example you can search for all websites hosted in Uganda (.ug) that are providing a feed in the rss format. Just write: site:ug filetype:rss
Look here:
http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&as_qdr=all&q=site%3Aug+filetype%3Arss&btnG=Zoeken&meta=
see screendump googlerss.jpg
Technorati search feeds
http://www.technorati.com/blogs/
see screendump technorati.jpg
Browser > Sage (Mozilla)
See screendump sage.rss
How to produce an RSS feed?
Most web2.0 tool provide feeds. E.g weblogs, social bookmarking tools, photo sharing tools all provide a feed related to a specific user account, a tag or a combination of the two. …
How to provide a podcast feed…??
When you are working on a website that doesn’t create feeds automatically, e.g. you are building it using an HTML editor, you can use a tool like FeedFire to generate an rss feed.
Content aggregation
1. How to publish RSS feed on my website?
More information on Atom, RSS, XML,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(protocol)
ppt’s from Maastrcht course, more based on pratical consequences, also explaning what JS feeds are
OPML is also a relevant format (used to exchange bookmarklists between applications; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPML
(put in resources section)
Feed burner Also for statistics
Maricopa > feed 2 JavaScript
http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/
2. Combining, remixing feeds, building new feeds
Suprglu
Feedomatic??? Ask Nynke?
Visualise this!!!!
3. Newsreader
What is it?
An online or offline tool or service. It is a tool/service that provides a way to manage new information that is uploaded to the web. You can manage the news sources that you would like to be subscribed to.
How does it work?
- Subscribe to a feed.
How do I find a feed?
How do I know if a website has a feed?
- Indicate what you have / have not read
- Keep things marked ‘unread’
- Categorize feeds
Stand alone, offline newsreaders, (see Yahoo list with resources , Wikipedia too?
Also offline reader for podcasts?
http://www.newsonfeeds.com/faq/aggregators (see also for categories below including podcasts)
Online newsreaders Bloglines, yahoo? Google? (see wikipedia)
Integrated in other software, e.g. Mozilla browser or Outlook
Email newsreaders
Mobile
Instant messaging
Different readers for different types of RSS feeds
There are several versions of RSS; most readers can read all these version for text-based feeds. Some of these versions can include audio or video files as enclosures. You will need a special type of reader to render such feeds.
Pro’s and Con’s, risks, tips
Overload pull/push. Tackling overload is a myth?
Bandwidth, regularly provide a feed costs bandwidth.
Provide a feed in Bloglines where people can subscribe so that your own server doesn’t have to deal with the constant requests.
Take into account that publishing many feeds on your website (in sidebars etcetera) can result in increased download time of your website.
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