1. RSS and Podcasting Martyn A George Feb 2007

2. 2 Outline What is RSS Feed Representation Feed Recognition Aggregators –Internet Explorer 7 Finding Feeds Podcasting

3. 3 What is RSS Really Simple Syndication orRich Site Summary orRDF Site Summary...... depending on your point of view a set of web feed formats used to share online content various formats exist but the most popular are RSS 2.0 and Atom

4. 4 Feed Representation RSS web feeds are represented using XML a feed contains metadata describing the content provider and one or more content items Example XML elements (RSS 2.0): - provider website title, URL, and description - title, summary, and URL of a referenced content item

5. 5 Sample Feed – RSS 2.0 Ocelot http://www.ocelot.edu/ The fascinating lives of ocelots en-us Fri, 09 Mar 2007 07:00:00 GMT A Herbivore as Prey http://www.ocelot.edu/articles/2007/item030.asp Have you ever wondered what would happen to a lone, injured herbivore in the path of a hungry, wandering ocelot? Find out in this fascinating article that reveals the hunting habits of ocelots. Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:41:20 GMT

6. 6 Sample Feed - Atom Ocelot 2007-03-09T07:00:00Z Bill Smith urn:uuid:80b53d72-d499-12d9-f91C-0003af07112c A Herbivore as Prey urn:uuid:23aab570-abcd-3a43-cdac-79ea211ae113 2007-03-09T21:30:02Z Have you ever wondered what would happen to a lone, injured herbivore in the path of a hungry, wandering ocelot? Find out in this fascinating article that reveals the hunting habits of ocelots.

7. 7 Recognising RSS Feeds on the Web web pages denote RSS feeds with buttons (links) similar to these: the method used to subscribe to a feed with these buttons depends upon the aggregator in use

8. 8 Aggregators aggregators retrieve syndicated web content content from all sources is presented as a consolidated view within the aggregator new content is periodically retrieved by the aggregator at predefined intervals aggregators can reside on a desktop computer or on a remote websitedesktop computerremote website modern web browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer embed feed aggregation

9. 9 Aggregators – Internet Explorer 7 remember that RSS feeds are simply XML files –earlier browsers simply displayed the XMLXML –some recent browsers including IE7 have aggregator functionality and display the XML as a human readable web pageweb page IE7 has additional aggregator features: –an icon indicates feed presence in page –a feeds list similar to ‘favorites’ is provided –feeds can be subscribed to using similar techniques as when adding favorites –Con: IE7 doesn’t support feeds that reference DTDs due to potential security issuesfeedspotential security issues

10. 10 Finding RSS Feeds Many RSS feed directories are available on the web Most offer browse by topic and an RSS search engine Some sample directories: 2RSS.Com syndic8.com Yahoo News Microsoft Feeds Directory

11. 11 Podcasting named after the Apple iPod podcasts are RSS feeds but distributed files are typically audio or video podcatchers (aggregators) automatically download recent episodes of subscribed programs Content can be automatically synchronised to portable devices for offline enjoyment iTunes is a popular podcatcher which works with iPods (or standalone)iTunes