An Introduction to Web Feeds (part one)

Now that you know more about blogs from Paul’s articles (I & II), it’s time to introduce you to web feeds, which are usually closely coupled with blogs.

Web feeds go by many names including just plain feed?, XML feed, web syndication, syndication, aggregation, RSS, and Atom. In this article I’m going to refer to it as a feed? for the sake of simplicity.

So what is a feed? A feed is a small file published in a special format (XML). It contains a summary of the recent content published on a web site, and allows you to find out about updates to that site without having to browse to it. This is one of the cool advantages of feeds, not only are you updated with new information from your favourite sites, but you’re kept posted with any changes on them too.

Who publishes feeds? Feeds are mainly associated with blogs and news sites, but are growing in popularity for syndicating almost any information on the web. This even includes sharing company information across an organisation! Another development is the use of feeds for publishing newsletters. Imagine publishing your newsletter on your website, whilst it is automatically sent out to all the people who subscribe to your feed, at the same time.

How do I know whether a site has a feed? Most sites conform to displaying an orange button or a link labelled with either XML , RSS , or Atom in the sidebar (although it could be placed anywhere on the site) to show that they have a feed. Another handy way of discovering whether a site has a feed, and if you use Mozilla Firefox as your browser, is to look in the right hand corner of the navigation bar. If you see a button like this called a live bookmark, you’ll know that the page has a feed.

Where do I begin? The first thing to do is actually subscribe to, and read, some feeds. Before you can do that you need to find a feed aggregator / feed reader / RSS reader / RSS client. There are two types of feed readers, web-based and installable applications. The pro to using a web-based reader is that you’ll be able to view your feeds from any computer with an internet connection, but you won’t be able to access your feeds offline as you can with a reader installed on your computer.

Here are some feed readers to get you started:

- Feed reader - Windows-based desktop feed aggregator (what Victoire uses)

- NetNewsWire - A newer, standalone desktop aggregator for MacOS X (what Paul uses)

- Headline Viewer - The original desktop aggregator. For most versions of Windows.

- SharpReader - Windows-based desktop aggregator; many features.

- Radio UserLand - Hybrid desktop/Web aggregator and weblogging tool. Windows and Macintosh (7.5.5+ and OSX).

- News is Free - Another Web-based aggregator which also does some third-party scraping.

- Apache JetSpeed - An Enterprise-class Java Portal that supports RSS.

In part two I’ll go into more detail about how to publish your own feed, as well as some nifty ideas and tricks on using feeds.

Resources for further reading:

- Wikipedia - Web feed

- Wikipedia - Aggregators

- SixApart - About Feeds (XML, RSS and Atom)

- Fagan Finder All about RSS

- RSS Tutorial for Content Publishers and Webmasters

More links to resources can be found at my del.icio.us feeds bookmarks page: http://del.icio.us/victoire_za/feeds

Technorati Tags: feeds, syndication, aggregation, xml feed, rss, rss feed, atom, news, blog, blogging

This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.

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Blogging platforms

Anyone heard of the blogging platform iUpload? I hadn’t heard about it myself until I read this preview to Forrester’s paper titled “The Forrester Wave: Blogging Platforms, Q2 2006″ published in June 2006.

Forrester evaluated leading blogging platforms across 54 criteria and found that iUpload leads the market with its robust blogging capabilities and its strong strategic vision of a blog as a lightweight content management system (CMS), a collaboration and knowledge management tool, and even as a foundation to form communities of customers. When choosing between a full-featured suite like iUpload’s Customer Conversation System or strong blogging-focused solutions like Movable Type and WordPress, companies should have a well-developed vision of how blogging will be used within the enterprise and then select a vendor that shares that vision.

Forrester conducted in-depth evaluations of nine blogging platforms: Drupal, iUpload’s Customer Conversation System, Roller, Six Apart’s Movable Type and TypePad, Telligent Systems’ Community Server, Traction Software’s TeamPage, UserLand Software’s Manila, and WordPress. To further enhance our analysis, we conducted client reference interviews with 30 user companies, including 3M, CNET Networks, General Motors, IBM, In-Q-Tel, McDonald’s, Oracle, SAP, Time, Wells Fargo, and Ziff Davis Media.

http://www.backbonemedia.com/blogsurvey/46-iUpload-casestudy.htm

This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.

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