About this product: So you have a business and you have a Web site. Bravo! You re doing all the right things to be successful. But wait the information on your Web site needs to be updated, and your customers need to know. Good heavens, didn t you spend half of last week doing that? There s got to be a quicker, easier way to keep your clientele informed, and while we re at it, how about building your business too?
RSS can come to your rescue, but first you need to know what it is and how to use it. Syndicating Web Sites With RSS Feeds For Dummies has what you need to know to get up and running fast and with today s flood of constantly-changing information, fast is a top priority.
Here, in plain English, you ll find out how to:
Use RSS to drive traffic to your Web site and build brand awareness
Choose and install the right software, set up RSS feeds, and decide on the format that meets your needs
Create RSS feeds from scratch, or put a news reader on your Web site
Improve your site s ranking in search engines and build customer loyalty
Enable your customers to choose when and how they receive updated information
Tailor information for your audience and publish all your updates quickly and easily
Promote your RSS feed and explain to your customers how to use it
Provide added value for your customers
Making the most of RSS can make life easier for both you and those who do business with you. Syndicating Web Sites With RSS Feeds For Dummies will help you maintain fresh content for your Web site, blog, or e-zine, promote your site and establish links to it, and even update vital documents like employee guides, price lists, and procedures manuals, quickly and easily.
About this product: A powerful technology, but a simple concept, RSS ('Really Simple Syndication') makes it possible to easily access frequently updated content on the Internet. RSS allows you to 'subscribe' to content and have updates automatically delivered to your computer. Many Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, podcasts, and wikis, have been made even more useful with the advent of RSS technology.
Let expert John Hendron show you how to use a news aggregator to harness the power of RSS for a variety of purposes, including classroom projects, professional development, and keeping students and parents informed.
* Learn how to use free and inexpensive software such as Garage Band and Audacity to manipulate audio files and create podcasts.
* Explore the pros and cons of various blogging platforms.
* Have your students blog, and use RSS to deliver their assignments to you automatically.
With RSS and the Read/Write Web, the possibilities are endless.
A glossary and an extensive list of online resources round out this essential guide to the power of Web syndication.
Also available:
Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools - ISBN 1564842347 Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education - ISBN 1564842479
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is the trusted source for professional development, knowledge generation, advocacy and leadership for innovation. ISTE is the premier membership association for educators and education leaders engaged in improving teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in PK-12 and teacher education. Home of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), the Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology (CARET), and ISTE's annual conference (formerly known as the National Educational Computing Conference, or NECC), ISTE represents more than 100,000 professionals worldwide. We support our members with information, networking opportunities, and guidance as they face the challenge of transforming education.
Some of the areas in which we publish are: -Web. 2.0 in the classroom-RSS, podcasts, and more -National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) -Professional development for educators and administrators -Integrating technology into the classroom and curriculum -Safe practices for the Internet and technology -Educational technology for parents
Perhaps the most explosive technological trend over the past two years has been blogging. As a matter of fact, it's been reported that the number of blogs during that time has grown from 100,000 to 4.8 million-with no end to this growth in sight.
What's the technology that makes blogging tick? The answer is RSS--a format that allows bloggers to offer XML-based feeds of their content. It's also the same technology that's incorporated into the websites of media outlets so they can offer material (headlines, links, articles, etc.) syndicated by other sites.
As the main technology behind this rapidly growing field of content syndication, RSS is constantly evolving to keep pace with worldwide demand. That's where "Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom" steps in. It provides bloggers, web developers, and programmers with a thorough explanation of syndication in general and the most popular technologies used to develop feeds.
This book not only highlights all the new features of RSS 2.0-the most recent RSS specification-but also offers complete coverage of its close second in the XML-feed arena, Atom. The book has been exhaustively revised to explain:
metadata interpretation
the different forms of content syndication
the increasing use of web services
how to use popular RSS news aggregators on the market
After an introduction that examines Internet content syndication in general (its purpose, limitations, and traditions), this step-by-step guide tackles various RSS and Atom vocabularies, as well as techniques for applying syndication to problems beyond news feeds. Most importantly, it gives you a firm handle on how to create your own feeds, and consume or combineother feeds.
If you're interested in producing your own content feed, "Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom" is the one book you'll want in hand.
An innovator's guide to application development with blog, wiki, and newsfeed technologies, this book introduces the new ways of collaboration enabled by these technologies and focuses on the fundamental concepts needed to understand how the technologies can be used in real world applications. Blog and wiki server internals are covered in depth, and newsfeed formats and web service protocols for blogging are covered from a developer's point-of-view. Also covered are a variety of techiques programmers can use to monitor blog conversations, such as newsfeed search engines, and ways to join in the conversation such as comments, trackbacks, and Weblogs.com pings. Examples in Java and C# are provided to show how to parse Atom and RSS format newsfeeds, how to generate valid newsfeeds, how to serve them efficiently, and how to automate blogging via web services based on the new Atom protocol and the older MetaWeblog API. Focus is given to more than a dozen blog apps—small but immediately useful example applications based on blog, wiki, and newsfeed technologies.
About this product: Now you can satisfy your appetite for information
This book is not about the minutia of RSS and Atom programming. It's about doing cool stuff with syndication feeds-making the technology give you exactly what you want the way you want. It's about building a feed aggregator and routing feeds to your e-mail or iPod, producing and hosting feeds, filtering, sifting, and blending them, and much more. Tan-talizing loose ends beg you to create more hacks the author hasn't thought up yet. Because if you can't have fun with the technology, what's the point?
A sampler platter of things you'll learn to do
Build a simple feed aggregator
Add feeds to your buddy list
Tune into rich media feeds with BitTorrent
Monitor system logs and events with feeds
Scrape feeds from old-fashioned Web sites
Reroute mailing lists into your aggregator
Distill popular links from blogs
Republish feed headlines on your Web site
Extend feeds using calendar events and microformats
A clear and concise guide to strategy, structure, selection with in depth technical coverage of feed formats and XML vocabularies
Clear explanation of feed formats and choices
Intro and reference for content professionals and developers
In depth guide to Feed XML vocabulary
In Detail
RSS and Atom are the most widely used of many content syndication formats that have developed over the last few years to address the need to distribute and receive streams of content from websites and applications. Sites syndicate content for a broad variety of reasons, from replacing email as a medium for outbound contact to updating satellite sites. Each format has evolved to meet the changing needs of its driving community. All the common formats use a specific XML vocabulary to structure a stream of content in an easily consumable format.
The book starts by analyzing the need to distribute content that RSS emerged to meet. It outlines in development of the various formats as way of understanding how the technology map of today came about. The current status of the leading formats is summarized succinctly.
Then RSS is examined in detail. The XML vocabulary and document structure is examined and explained clearly. Each element is illustrated with carefully chosen examples. The changes through RSS 0.9x to 2.0 are covered in depth as are extensions and modules such as BitTorrent, EasyNews and others.
The book then goes on to examine the richness and complexity of RSS 1.0 and 1.1, again covering both how design decisions were made, then covering the XML structure in depth. The same in depth treatment is then given to Atom, comparing and contrasting the formats where appropriate.
What you will learn from this book?
The book will give you:
An understanding of why content syndication matters, and what are the driving forces behind the technology
A good grounding in how RSS and other formats have evolved
A detailed knowledge of the XML structure of each format
The knowledge to conceive, design and implement your own content syndication services
Approach
The style of the book is succinct and precise. The information is densely packed but well structured, making it both readable as an introduction and overview, but also highly functional as a reference. The author is authoritative but friendly in his style, and peppers the text with interesting examples and pertinent URLs.
Who this book is written for?
This book has been written for content professionals, web developers and marketing teams who want to understand what RSS and content syndication is, how it works, what it can for them, and how they can get it up and running. It assumes a solid knowledge of XML and how the web works, but is not intended to be the exclusive province of the technically minded.
About this product: Whether you want to create your own RSS feeds or just would like to locate and add them to your Web site, this is the book for you. In the Secrets of RSS, author Steve Holzner provides real-world guidance and advice to introduce you everything you need to know about effectively implementing and using RSS:
• How to connect to RSS feed, handle them, and track down what you want • The difference between RSS and blogs, and how nearly every major RSS reader works • How to design an RSS feed, what you'll find in RSS feeds, and formats and links • Create your own first RSS feed from scratch:and subscribe to it • Putting RSS to work in the real-world • The free tools and software available to help you create RSS files • Finding, subscribing to, and creating podcasts • Spreading the word about your RSS feed • RSS best practices • And more!
About this product: RSS and Atom are specifications that give users the power to subscribe to information they want to receive and give content developers tools to provide continuous subscriptions to willing recipients in a spam-free setting. RSS and Atom are the technical power behind the growing millions of blogs on the Web. Blogs change the Web from a set of static pages or sites requiring programming expertise to update to an ever changing, constantly updated landscape that anyone can contribute to. RSS and Atom syndication provides users an easy way to track new information on as many Web sites as they want. This book offers you insight to understanding the issues facing the user community so you can meet users' needs by writing software and Web sites using RSS and Atom feeds.
Beginning with an introduction to all the current and coming versions of RSS and Atom, you'll go step by step through the process of producing, aggregating, and storing information feeds. When you're finished, you'll be able to produce client software and Web sites that create, manipulate, aggregate, and display information feeds effectively.
"This book is full of practical advice and tips for consuming, producing, and manipulating information feeds. I only wish I had a book like this when I started writing RSS Bandit." - Dare Obasanjo, RSS Bandit creator: http://www.rssbandit.org/
About this product: Do you find your Web searches frustrating and time consuming? If you're like most, you use the Web for research--whether for school or work or to find essential healthcare information. But with all the ads and questionable articles getting in the way, it can take days just to find one reliable source! That's where The About.com Guide to Online Research comes in.
Let industry expert and the About.com Guide to Web Search, Wendy Boswell, lead you through essential tips and tricks to streamline your searches. With this authoritative guide you'll learn how to:
Choose the right search engine
Google like a pro
Evaluate sites for accuracy
Dig deeper with the invisible Web
Revolutionize searches using RSS
Find relevant multimedia
From Boolean searches to mining the blogosphere, this guide is packed full of information for anyone who has ever sat staring at a search engine wondering where do I begin? With Wendy and About.com, you'll be clicking your way to information that is accurate, timely, and relevant in no time!
About this product: Originally developed by Netscape in 1999, RSS (which can stand for RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication) is an XML-based format that allows web developers to describe and syndicate web site content. Content Syndication with RSS offers webloggers, developers, and the programmers who support them a thorough explanation of syndication in general and RSS in particular. Written for web developers who want to offer XML-based feeds of their content, as well as developers who want to use the content that other people are syndicating, the book explores and explains metadata interpretation, different forms of content syndication, and the increasing use of web services in this field. Topics covered in the book include:
Creating XML syndication feeds with RSS 0.9x and 2.0
Beyond headlines: creating richer feeds with RSS 1.0 and RDF metadata
Using feeds to enrich a site or find information
Publish and subscribe: intelligent updating
News aggregators, such as Meerkat, Syndic8, and Newsisfree, and their web services
Alternative industry-centric standards
If you're interested in producing your own RSS feed, this step-by-step guide to implementation is the book you'll want in hand.