Shared RSS - Syndication for the Rest of Us

Oct 7
21:00

2004

Andrew J. Morris

Andrew J. Morris

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RSS ... or RSS ... (RSS Feeds for short) all refer to the same thing. There are two parts to the process, the ... and the ... The ... produces a small text file in a s

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RSS Syndication or RSS Newsfeeds (RSS Feeds for short) all refer
to the same thing. There are two parts to the process,Shared RSS - Syndication for the Rest of Us Articles the
publisher, and the consumer. The publisher produces a small text
file in a special format that lists the title and address of an
article or resource published on the World Wide Web. The consumer
uses a program, usually called an aggregator to read and display
the contents of that simple text file, with links to the web
page. Or the consumer may visit a website that includes an
aggregator program, and view the results as a web page. Members
of Yahoo.com, for example, can set their personal 'My Yahoo'
pages to display the contents of any RSS feeds they select.

That is all there is to it. Simple. That's why some people say
RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication.'

Some confusion has arisen because an RSS feed may be used in
several ways. Calling it a 'newsfeed' is the first mistake, since
RSS is used for much more than news. The most common situation is
for the RSS items listed to have a short title, link to the
original web page referred to, and a short description of the
contents of that web page. But other people are including the
complete contents of their resource directly in the RSS feed. So
the feed may contain a graphic image of a cartoon, an entire post
to a weblog (or blog), or the complete contents of a newsletter,
rather than just a link back to those resources on a web site.
Other sites leave out the description, and just list titles
linked back to their website. And some versions of RSS allow you
to leave out the title, so long as you have a description.

Speaking of 'versions' of RSS, that is the source of even more
confusion. RSS began with version 0.90, and was called 'RDF Site
Summary' -- the RDF refers to 'Resource Description Framework,'
the method of labeling different parts of the file. This early
version was updated and changed through various incarnations,
including 0.91, 0.92, 0.93 and 0.94, and they began to call RSS
'Really Simple Syndication.' Then someone came along with a
different format, slightly more complicated, and called it RSS
version 1.0. Supporters of version 0.94 didn't like the
implication that 1.0 was somehow an advance on 0.94 when in
actuality it was a completely different format, so they came up
with version 2.0 which was an improved version of 0.94, but
still unlike 1.0. Rather than take sides in all this squabbling,
someone else came up with their own version and called it Atom,
to distance themselves from the RSS battles. Someone else
developed Blogrolls that use OPML (Outline Processor Markup
Language). Most of these formats are either loosely or strictly
based on XML, the parent mark-up scheme.

None of this confusion of method and purpose has helped spread
this really useful tool. Most RSS aggregators can read any of
these formats, so the situation is not as hopeless as it may
seem, but many folks still throw the whole thing out when they
can't figure out exactly how it is supposed to work.

On http://www.SharedRSS.com/ we use version 1.0 because it is
endorsed by W3C as being supportive of the 'semantic web.' For
the casual user however, the version is really not important.
SharedRSS is a simple site that performs a very powerful
function ... it brings the benefits of RSS syndication to all
those who publish websites, but who add new material too
infrequently to warrant having their own RSS feed.

RSS Syndication was designed to help people find out about new
content on the web, long before the search engines get around to
finding it. It makes it easy for people to find out about new
content that interests them, without having to return to the
search engines and wade through all the material they have seen
before. For sites with frequently changing content, it has worked
well for them to create their own RSS feed and update it as new
content is added to their website. But what about all those sites
that only add an occasional new article or story to their
website, or who publish a newsletter once per month? Or those who
just can't take the time to figure the ins and outs of formatting
an RSS feed? An RSS feed that only gets updated once every few
months is of little value; very few people will add it to their
search list in their aggregator. Shared RSS solves this problem
by lumping together articles from different sites covering the
same topic, and lets them announce the availability of their new
material in a feed shared with others publishing on the same
topic. This makes the feeds more useful to the consumer, so they
are more likely to add the link to their aggregator. It benefits
the publisher by making more people aware of their material as
soon as it is put on-line.