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RSS and Podcasting. Martyn A George. Feb 2007. Outline. What is RSS Feed Representation Feed Recognition Aggregators Internet Explorer 7 Finding Feeds Podcasting. What is RSS. Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary
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RSS and Podcasting Martyn A George Feb 2007
Outline What is RSS Feed Representation Feed Recognition Aggregators • Internet Explorer 7 Finding Feeds Podcasting
What is RSS Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary ...... depending on your point of view • a set of web feed formats used to share online content • various formats exist but the most popular are RSS 2.0 and Atom
Feed Representation • RSS web feeds are represented using XML • a feed contains metadata describing the content provider and one or more content items • Example XML elements (RSS 2.0): <channel> - provider website title, URL, and description <item> - title, summary, and URL of a referenced content item
Sample Feed – RSS 2.0 <?xml version="1.0"?> <rss version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Ocelot</title> <link>http://www.ocelot.edu/</link> <description>The fascinating lives of ocelots</description> <language>en-us</language> <pubDate>Fri, 09 Mar 2007 07:00:00 GMT</pubDate> <item> <title>A Herbivore as Prey</title> <link>http://www.ocelot.edu/articles/2007/item030.asp</link> <description>Have you ever wondered what would happen to a lone, injured herbivore in the path of a hungry, wandering ocelot? Find out in this fascinating article that reveals the hunting habits of ocelots. </description> <pubDate>Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:41:20 GMT</pubDate> </item> </channel> </rss>
Sample Feed - Atom <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"> <title>Ocelot</title> <link href="http://www.ocelot.edu/</"/> <updated>2007-03-09T07:00:00Z</updated> <author> <name>Bill Smith</name> </author> <id>urn:uuid:80b53d72-d499-12d9-f91C-0003af07112c</id> <entry> <title>A Herbivore as Prey</title> <link href="http://www.ocelot.edu/articles/2007/item030.asp"/> <id>urn:uuid:23aab570-abcd-3a43-cdac-79ea211ae113</id> <updated>2007-03-09T21:30:02Z</updated> <summary>Have you ever wondered what would happen to a lone, injured herbivore in the path of a hungry, wandering ocelot? Find out in this fascinating article that reveals the hunting habits of ocelots. </summary> </entry> </feed>
Recognising RSS Feeds on the Web web pages denote RSS feeds with buttons (links) similar to these: the method used to subscribe to a feed with these buttons depends upon the aggregator in use
Aggregators • aggregators retrieve syndicated web content • content from all sources is presented as a consolidated view within the aggregator • new content is periodically retrieved by the aggregator at predefined intervals • aggregators can reside on a desktop computer or on a remote website • modern web browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer embed feed aggregation
Aggregators – Internet Explorer 7 • remember that RSS feeds are simply XML files • earlier browsers simply displayed the XML • some recent browsers including IE7 have aggregator functionality and display the XML as a human readable web page • IE7 has additional aggregator features: • an icon indicates feed presence in page • a feeds list similar to ‘favorites’ is provided • feeds can be subscribed to using similar techniques as when adding favorites • Con: IE7 doesn’t support feeds that reference DTDs due to potential security issues
Finding RSS Feeds • Many RSS feed directories are available on the web • Most offer browse by topic and an RSS search engine • Some sample directories: 2RSS.Com syndic8.com Yahoo News Microsoft Feeds Directory
Podcasting • named after the Apple iPod • podcasts are RSS feeds but distributed files are typically audio or video • podcatchers (aggregators) automatically download recent episodes of subscribed programs • Content can be automatically synchronised to portable devices for offline enjoyment • iTunes is a popular podcatcher which works with iPods (or standalone)