RSS, Blogs and Wikis SLAIG - Surrey Library and Information Group 20 th February 2007

1. RSS, Blogs and WikisSLAIG - Surrey Library and Information Group20th February 2007 Karen Blakeman RBA Information Services, UK UKeiG Committee Member Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

2. RSS vs Blogs vs Wikis • RSS • a means of delivering information to the user • Blogs and wikis • means of publishing information • both are content management systems • can be quick and easy to use • can also be used as collaborative tools within organisations and outside of the organisation • both can automatically generate RSS feeds Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

3. What is RSS? • Stands for Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary or RDF site summary • depends on version • Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.9x) • RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0) • Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.x) • also Google’s ATOM • written in XML • extensible markup language • look for the orange logos • A means of delivering headlines, alerts, tables of contents Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

4. Why isn’t RSS more popular? • Need a feed reader to read them and get the most out of the technology • Web based readers or • Programs on your desktop machine, laptop, Blackberry, mobile • Will all change: • RSS reader incorporated into IE 7 and Outlook 2007 • soon rolling out onto people’s desktops Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

5. Raw RSS feed Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

6. Feeds in Omea Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

7. http://www.google.com/reader Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

8. http://www.bloglines.com/ Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

9. Feeds in Outlook 2007 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

10. Who does RSS? • Lots of people • Companies and organisations, for example CILIP, UKeiG • for delivering news of training and events, headlines and abstracts of newsletter articles, blog headlines, discussions in web based communities of practice • many news services now offer RSS feeds • Yahoo News, Google News, Moreover • BBC, newspapers, magazines, Factiva • professional, scientific, trade press • BMJ, New Scientist, Information World Review etc. • Individuals, companies Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

11. RSS vs email alerts and newsletters • Bypasses the spam filters • Reduces the overload in your inbox • separate email alerts, headlines etc from urgent email • Quicker and easier to scan individual headlines within an alert and decide what is relevant • Can set up filters to pick up stories that mention specific products, companies etc. as the feeds come in • All your alerts are in one place • can read them source by source, altogether, by date and time, whatever! Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

12. RSS vs email alerts and newsletters (2) • You control when you receive and read the feeds • look at your feeds when you want to • set up default update frequency for all your feeds • can change frequency of update and alerting for individual feeds • not always available in web based readers • Easier to “unsubscribe” • just hit delete! • Easy to select and forward interesting, individual stories to users, colleagues, clients Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

13. Adding a feed to your reader • Spotted an interesting RSS feed? • Click on the RSS, XML, Atom or feed logo • sometimes the URL of the feed is displayed in the text of the page • Copy the URL of the feed page • Paste into the Add or Subscribe box of your reader • there may be additional options you can select • OR • Depending on your feed reader, there may be buttons, right click options, browser plug-ins that will directly ‘subscribe’ you • That's it! Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

14. Want to change feed readers? • No problem • Export your list of feeds to an OPML file (Outline Processor Markup Language) • Import the OPML file into your new feed reader • Note: will not import program specific filters or rules Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

15. RSS readers • RSS Compendium • http://allrss.com/ • Web based readers • access from any terminal or PC • options and functions not as comprehensive as most PC programs • Newsgator.com, Bloglines.com, www.google.com/reader/ • Desktop programs • plugins for Outlook e.g. Newsgator • standalone programs e.g. Omea, Feed Demon • Outlook 2007 and IE 7 have RSS capability built in • Newsgator suite of programs can synchronize between web account and desktop reader Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

16. Add feeds to your web page • Incorporate feeds in your web pages using javascript, php, asp etc. • Third part services e,g, RapidFeeds, Feed2js.org Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

17. BBC news feeds on your site • http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

18. Disadvantages of RSS • At present, have to make the effort to set up a web based reader or download and install a program • will change when IE7 and MS Office 2007 start to become more widely adopted • Not all publishers provide RSS feeds as well as email alerts • It is seriously addictive!! “Sorry, have to go – got to squeeze 5 minutes work in between feed updates” Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

19. Blogs • What is a blog? • short for weblog • content management system with attitude! • publishes information chronologically • content can range from self-indulgent drivel to extreme erudition • easy to use and publish from anywhere, hence the high proportion of utter rubbish in the blogosphere “Vodcasts and blogs are to the noughties what graffiti was to the Seventies: mindless scrawls reading: 'I woz ere.' It says: 'I'm a moron, but worship me anyway.” The Observer, 3rd December 2006 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1962820,00.html Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

20. Blogs (2) • Blogs by industry gurus are a good way of keeping up to date with what is happening in a sector • Good way of disseminating information on new services, product launches and new developments • can use the comments option to encourage feedback • Internal blogs to document project progress • Can even be used to generate web sites • http://www.newsbriefsoman.info/ • Most automatically generate RSS feeds Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

21. Anatomy of a blog (1) Hosted on a web site with its own domain name Most recent posting at the top Author profile Option for comments Tags or index terms Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

22. Anatomy of a blog (2) Links to related sites and feeds Blogroll of related blogs Links to archives Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

23. UKeiG collaborative blog Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

24. English Cut Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

25. Do you know you are looking at a blog? Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

26. Corporate blogging • Makovsky 2006 State of Corporate Blogging Survey • http://www.makovsky.com/mak/corporatebloggingsurvey/Makovsky2006StateOfCorporateBloggingSurvey.pdf • surveyed 150 business leaders from Fortune 1000 companies • 20% monitor blogs to find out what is being said about their company • 21% read blogs about their sector at least once a week • Jupiter Research • 34% of large companies already blogging, and another 35% plan to • http://tinyurl.com/ryo2p • Product/company reputation • The “Kryptonite Affair” • http://tinyurl.com/9p93l Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

27. Blogpulse Trends Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

28. Where are the blogging UK librarians? • http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/where-are-the-blogging-uk-librarians • University of Glamorgan, LRC Blog • http://lrc.weblog.glam.ac.uk/ • Shush! – the Information Services Library blog • http://library.northampton.ac.uk/blog/index.php • Univ of Bath Library Science News • http://bathsciencenews.blogspot.com/ • ILS Matters • http://www2.worc.ac.uk/wordpress/ • E-Resources News and Trials (University of Liverpool) • http://liveresources.blogspot.com/ • Libraries in the NHS • http://nelh.blogspot.com/ • Talking Knowledge Management • http://talkingkm.blogspot.com/ Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

29. More blogging UK librarians • Info Junkie • http://swashford.blogspot.com/ • Swansea Libraries • http://swansealibraries.bogspot.com/n • Hampshire and Isle of Wight • http://hiow.blogspot.com/ Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

30. http://hiow.blogspot.com/ Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

31. Setting up your own blog • Host on the blogging service’s own server or install on your site • Wordpress • Host on http://www.wordpress.com/ • Software for loading onto your own site at http://www.wordpress.org/ • Free • Blogger • http://www.blogger.com/ • owned by Google • Host on Blogger or publish to your own site • free • Typepad • Host on http://www.typepad.com/ • Priced • Also Movable Type, Live Journal at http://www.sixapart.com/ Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

32. Tracking down blogs and RSS • Look for the Blogroll on a relevant blog • Google Blogsearch • http://www.google.com/blogsearch • Ask.co.uk – Blogs and feeds • Windows Live (live.com) – Feeds • also site: + feed: command • site:bbc.co.uk feed:bbc.co.uk • Yahoo Advanced Search & file format RSS/XML • Exalead - limit search to RSS feeds • Blog and feed search engines • Technorati, Blogpulse • See also the blog search tool list on http://www.crossengine.com/ Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

33. Wikis • wiki-wiki – Hawaiian meaning quick • A collaborative web application that allows users to easily add and edit content • Can be used for • developing documentation • project management • History keeps a record of the changes and different versions of the documents • Encourages collaboration • Many have blog like discussion areas and RSS feeds • Most famous example is Wikipedia • Standardised format and layout “Makes our contributors concentrate on content rather than wasting time on pretty layouts” Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

34. Wikis (2) • Default in most wiki software lets anyone create and edit a page • need to protect Admin functions and limit creation, edit and access rights • can ‘lock’ individual pages or sections • can require registration to set up new pages or edit existing ones • Internet encyclopaedias go head to head • www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.htm • Fatally Flawed • corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf • IBM history flow • www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/index.htm • Not always straightforward to install on your system • use third party “wiki farms” to start with • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_farms • Reluctant contributors Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

35. Wikipedia Option to edit the page Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

36. Wikipedia (2) No edit option Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

37. Wikipedia - history Date of edits Author/editor Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

38. www.alacrawiki.com Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

39. What next? • Have a go yourself • RSS • Try Newsgator, Bloglines, Google Reader, IE 7, Omea etc. • Blogs • Set up one yourself • Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/) – not ideal but great to start with and experiment • WordPress and host it on wordpress.com • Wikis • Wary of setting one up yourself? Even on a wiki farm? • Come and play on the UKeiG Dog’s Breakfast page • http://ukeig.xwiki.com/ Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

40. ukeig.xwiki.com – Dog’s Breakfast Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk