Who is Smik?

Sunday 24 June 2007

Creating RSS

Creating an RSS feed is not nearly as difficult as it once was.
The easiest way to go about it is to create a blog and they usually generate an RSS feed.
Check here for information about getting a blog

Tumblr is a tool that allows you to generate a blog from a "web journey" and the resultant blog is available as an RSS feed.

XFruits says it can generate an RSS feed from email, but I have not played with this myself.

RSS Aggregators and Readers

Aggregators are web places where you can identify the RSS feeds that you want to monitor
You access them via the web from wherever you are

iGoogle: http://www.google.com/ig
Pageflakes: http://www.pageflakes.com
My pageflakes: Kerrie's Pageflakes
Bloglines: http://www.bloglines.com
Blogbridge: http://www.blogbridge.com
Google Reader: http://reader.google.com

RSS Readers are generally software that you install on your computer

A list of RSS Readers that you can download
http://blogspace.com/rss/readers

RssReader - free RSS reader is able to display any RSS and Atom news feed (XML)
http://www.rssreader.com/


RssPublisher
http://www.rsspublisher.com/

Tuesday 29 May 2007

What does RSS do?

RSS feeds are received as xml and are then displayed at the receiving computer in html.

Thus 'raw' xml' content looks a little like html with similar 'markup' features.

Click here http://api.edna.edu.au/headline.rss?sector=edna for an example (this may behave differently if you are using Firefox)

Sometimes you are able to use a website’s features to display an RSS feed.
Sometimes you have to pull the RSS feed in using JavaScript. More about that later.

RSS feeds may be generated by blogs like this one
They enable to user to monitor additions to the blog

The text version of podcasts are also often available as an RSS feed.

RSS feeds thus enable the user to select sources of information and keep up to date without having to remember to visit the original website.

The source site pushes the RSS feed out, the receiving end pulls the RSS feed in.

What is RSS?

RSS is an acronym with several explanations:

  • Rich Site Syndication
  • Really Simple Syndication
  • Really Simple Syntax

RSS is a feature of xml technology and facilitates the transfer of content from one computer to another.

Sometimes these are called news feeds, or headlines

One feature of RSS is that as data on the parent site is updated, so the data on the receiving site is updated.

This process is called syndication

For further information see http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/help/rss_help

Monday 28 May 2007

Interesting sites

Flickr Vision
Shows you batches of 'last uploaded' pictures to Flickr
http://flickrvision.com/
Gives you the most recent 25, counts down, and when you have seen them, starts again with the 'most recent 25'

Twitter Vision
http://twittervision.com/
You joinTwitter and post
You must have a location and an image defined to appear on the public feed and to be located on the map

Sunday 27 May 2007

My other places

Library Thing Book reviews
http://www.librarything.com/rss/reviews/smik

My blog at education.au
http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/ksmith/

Crime Space
http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/smiksa

I have created this blogspot space to generate RSS feeds for professional development sessions.
It appears the RSS feed is
http://kerrie-smik.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Just copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader