RSS Tools

What are RSS Feeds?

RSS can stand for "Really Simple Syndication" and is a way to "subscribe" to a website and get updates when they're published. It is usually used for frequently publish work —such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video.

An RSS document, also known as a feed, includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.
RSS formats are all XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats.

RSS Feed Reader

Software called "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator" are used to manage subscriptions. They can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed or by clicking an RSS icon in a web browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

Special RSS Tools

Filtering RSS Feeds

A downside to RSS feeds is that they may have lots of false positive if not filtered. For a broad site that discuss many topics, you may want to just get one particular set of content. Below are some tools that will help you:
* Dapps at Dapper.net
* Pipes at Yahoo Pipes
* FeedRinse Keyword Tool; lets you filter out uninterested content

Creating RSS Feeds

Not all sites have a ready to subscribe RSS button. The following are useful if there's no RSS feed available on a page but you would like to set one up:
* FeedYes
* Feed43
* Dapps: Can help create feeds from similar content

Usage in Project

Below I will review my usage of Google Read as my primary RSS Feed Reader and discuss the Feed Rinse Tool

Name: Google Reader
Access: Google Reader
Frequency: I read my RSS feeds several times a day.
Information: Google Reader is an RSS Feed Reader that allows me to subscribe to a variety of different pages and pools all the information into one location. I have subscriptions to blogs, news sites, forums etc.
Query: You can read about the sites from which I pulled feeds from in the RSS Feed evaluation Section for this project.
Evaluation: (10/10) I love Google Reader, it has made my life 1,000 times easier in this project. It is convenient to just go to one location to check. It has the option of sharing my feeds that are relevant so I can compile this lovely Shared Items list. It allows me to star important feeds, makes notes, go back to them etc.
Miscellaneous: The only bad thing about it is that now I have so many feeds that I never get to read through all of them. However, with the new filtering tools I've learned in class, I plan to cut down on them.

Go here for an index of all the tools I used.
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