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RSS/Atom

Author: Dan McCrearyDan McCreary & Associates

Date: November/17/2006

The Web Standard for Subscription and Notification

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Overview of Presentation• What is RSS?

– Background – usenet groups, newsfeeds, summaries– Versions .9, 1.0, 2.0 and Atom

• How is it used?– Broadcasting vs. Narrowcasting– Notification and Distribution

• How can I add RSS data to my web site?– XML and RDF file formats, tools, web content

management tools

• Future– Atom, Syndication, Multimedia, BitTorrent and Tivo

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What is RSS/Atom?• An XML file format that you add to your

web site that describes information content about periodic articles

• Used by the "blogosphere" to allow individuals to build customized "news readers"

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What does RSS/Atom it look like?<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

<title>Example Feed</title><subtitle>A subtitle.</subtitle><link href="http://example.org/"></link><updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02Z</updated><author>

<name>John Doe</name><email>johndoe@example.com</email>

</author><id>urn:uuid:60a76c80-d399-11d9-b91C-0003939e0af6</id><entry>

<title>Atom-Powered Robots Run Amok</title><link href="http://example.org/2003/12/13/atom03"></link><id>urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a</id><updated>2003-12-13T18:30:02Z</updated><summary>Some text.</summary>

</entry></feed>

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How do I subscribe to a feed?How hard is it to do this?

Google Toolbar Example:1. Go to the page that has a feed2. Press the subscribe button in the Google toolbar3. Drag it to the right spot on your Google homepage

Other1. Standalone newsreader2. Browser plug-in (InfoRSS)3. Firefox extensions

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Google Toolbar Example

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Google Homepage Example

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How do you add it to your web site?• Configure your web content management

systems to provide an RSS/Atom feed

http://www.cmsmatrix.org

Note: If your web site CMS does not have RSS support you will need to write an XML transform that converts the HTML to XML

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RSS/Atom Logos

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Yahoo RSS Study (March 2006)• Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet

users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.

• 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.

• 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts.

• Even tech-savvy "Aware RSS Users" prefer to access RSS feeds via user-friendly, browser basedexperiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).

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Sample News Reader (InfoRSS)

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Stages of Interactivity1. Read your web site2. Bookmark your web site3. Subscribe to your web site (RSS)4. Blog about your web site5. Take a poll/survey on your web site6. Comment on your web site7. Suggest a change on your web site8. Add content on your web site9. Remove inappropriate or incorrect content

(Wikipedia)

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Potential Participants

Expanding Your Participants

• Architectures to expand your participation

Today'sParticipants

Reference: Tim O'Reilly's Architecture of Participation Article

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Questions

Dan McCrearyDan McCreary & Associatesdan@danmccreary.com(952) 931-9198cell (612) 986-1552