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RSS How-to and Info

 
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Daddee
I once was a slug.




Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 2815
Location: Mesa, AZ

PostPosted: 8/16/2004, 12:50 pm    Post subject: RSS How-to and Info Reply to topic Reply with quote

This is in response to Mike's announcement that we have a new RSS feed for AZH.
RSS Feed Info

It is entirely possible that Mike and I are the only ones excited by this latest development – but just in case we’re not, here is some more information on how cool the new RSS feature is.

What is RSS?

Well, it stands for Really Simple Syndication. And basically the job of RSS is to give you a quick headline scan of what’s new to a particular site. You can then scan a lot of information and then get more info if you see something you’re interested in. There are lots of good sites that talk more about it, so more info can be found here.

Many sites use RSS feeds. Blogs are the primary users of the technology right now, but there are many news sites that do the RSS feed thing. Nearly all the Yahoo news sites put out an RSS feed, several CNN news sites do as well (although they appear to be specific sites that are fed only to certain services such as Bloglines).

How do I work with RSS

The first thing you need is a good RSS reader or aggregator. A reader does nothing more than read the RSS feed and put it into readable form in a program – not much different from how any web-browser operates. The cool part comes when you use an aggregator.

An aggregator basically pulls the latest RSS updates from any site you point to (it can read several hundred or more sites at once if you wanted it to) and then puts them all in one place where you can look through them. It helps organize all of the sites (similar to the way you use folders in Windows) and can also act as a secondary browser.

For example, I use two different aggregators: SharpReader and Bloglines. In SharpReader Between the two I track over 40 sites – I can look at the headline of updates and a short blurb of text to see if what is posted is interesting to me, then choose to read it or not. It takes me about an hour to get through the roughly 200 new posts that get updated every morning (most sites being updated around 8:00 am EST).

Where can I get an RSS reader/aggregator?

The first place to go is to this site. It lists several good readers that are available (even some for Mac users). They are all free. Both Mike and I use SharpReader which is an excellent and very simple reader that is free for download and use. I have also been working recently with Bloglines which is a Web based reader. It is a free service that you register to use, then you can access it from any computer anywhere. I like it for the portability function, but I only use it if I am not at home. Another related service is Newsisfree.com which I’m fairly certain is a subsidiary of Bloglines (or vice versa).

SharpReader is very easy to use, and it also will maintain a memory of past updates. You can set how long it will keep an update on file in the settings. Bloglines has no memory so once you click on an update, it goes away. However, Bloglines can also provide you with suggestions for blogs or news services to link to, if you are using SharpReader you have to find all the RSS feeds on your own.

What does all this mean in conjunction with Arizona Hikers?

Essentially, the RSS reader can be pointed to the AZH site and it will update automatically every so often (mine is set to update every hour), and any new posts to the site will show up in the reader. You can see the author, forum and title of the thread and then the full text of the post shows up as well.

So far, if you look at a post in SharpReader it will also register back at AZH that you saw the post and mark it as being read there. With SharpReader you can also double-click any post and it shows up in the browser window and you can respond to the post just as though it were in your normal browser.

For me it has really streamlined the way I look through the site. I don’t have to sort through all the forums every time I log onto the site – I just scroll through the new posts in the reader and respond to the posts I want to inject a healthy dose of wordy and useless/questionable information into (since that’s what most of my posts amount to).

Bloglines is slightly less cool. You get the same information, but if you want to comment on a post, you have to click on the post title which opens up a new browser window. Also, scrolling through the new posts on Bloglines does not mark them as being read on AZH.

So, there you have it. AZH is fully techno-savy and up to date on the latest trends in php and blog-style message boards.

_________________
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"...haven't you lived long enough to know that two men may honestly differ about a question and both be right?"
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