Twitter RSS Feed Tutorial: Using Feeds on Website with Widgets
The majority of Internet
users have heard of RSS or Atom (probably because of all those gif buttons
around the network), but haven’t a clue what It’s all about.
The Simple Version
Imagine the internet is
made up of lots of documents (it kind of is).
An RSS feed directs documents to you that may interest you (because you
picked them…kinda). The RSS feed will
publish currently updating material. You
can use it to publish, and you can use it to follow the publisher.
The Technical Version
RSS is widely considered
an acronym for Really Simple Syndication (or Rich Site Summary, or RDF Site
Summary) and is essentially a format for distribution and syndication on the
Web (feed), based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) useful in the
construction of the so-called Semantic Web, namely that "part" of the
web formed and built from documents and more generally the information
presented in a format suitable for automatic processing and interrogation.
Without going into too
much technical, we can generally make this distinction:
There are two groups of
RSS, one based on RDF (versions 0.90 and 1.0) and one that's not (0.91, 0.92
and 2.0).
RSS (0.92):
Undoubtedly the oldest among the various standards in use
today on the Internet, changing the format originally used by Netscape;
RSS (2.0):
Is the evolution of size 0.92, Userland released by in
2002, which inherits the simplicity, but which adds support for various
additional modules ( , , , );
RSS (1.0):
This is the official format of the W3C (conforms to RDF),
extensible through XML namespaces without having to change the
"heart" of the format. This is the fundamental difference with the
other "dialects" of RSS. And, it is modular.
As for those who publish
within the web, their only problem we have is deciding which feeds to “join”.
Currently the two most
popular of those who create the feeds are the RSS (2.0) and Atom (1.0).
The following is an
example of RSS 2.0 feed whose main focus is simplicity:
<? Xml version =
"1.0"?>
<rss
version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>
AshleysGreatExample Channel </ title>
<link>
http://AshleysGreatExample.com/ </ link>
<description>
AshleysGreatExample channel </ description>
<item>
<title> Killer boobs
on the loose </ title>
<link>
http://AshleysGreatExample.com/2012/10/06 </ link>
Happened today
<description> other things </ description>
</ Item>
<item>
<title> Killer
boobs on the loose freedom</ title>
<link>
http://AshleysGreatExample.com/2012/10/07 </ link>
</ Item>
</ Channel>
</ RSS>
With respect to those who
should read this news, the problem is limited only by choice. On the web there are so many available for
download on both PC and web based applications.
Below are some of the most
popular aggregators and feed readers worth mentioning:
AmphetaDesk www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/ this
must be installed on your PC.
Bloglines: www.bloglines.com based web service
quickly and efficiently.
PubSub www.pubsub.com/
NewsIsFree: www.newsisfree.com/
Newsgator: www.newsgator.com/home.aspx
My Yahoo: my.yahoo.com/ web based service
offered by Yahoo!
Fastbuzz: www.fastbuzz.com/main.jsp (another
web aggregator)
NewsMonster: www.newsmonster.org/
"run" on your browser after installing it.
Wildgrape NewsDesk: www.wildgrape.net/ also be
downloaded and installed on this PC.
These are some rather big
websites that currently publish web content via RSS feeds, and may be worth a
look if you are just starting with RSS feeds:
Yahoo!
BBC News
Amazon.com
Google
CNET
You can also find free online
RSS feeds for a variety of content in this page
www.freeonline.org/rss.html
with information and descriptions.
RSS was born a true community-oriented search
engines such as feed:
Bloglines , owned by Ask Jeeves, who besides
being an aggregator (of above) is also a useful search tool for feeds.
Daypop that was one of the first search engine
of blogs / feeds,
Feedster which offers some nice features like
for example isscriversi to a given search and save it as a feed or even
rivevere the new results directly via email
Technorati that enables search by keyword, tag
or URL
PubSub then it is very unusual in that a
search is not performed by the user directly, but can 'be a subscription to the
search keys you want, after which you receive alerts via the IM, email, SMS,
PDA as soon as they found the content updated.
