RSS and the New Ecology of the Web

John Remmers

Dept. of Computer Science, EMU (Emeritus)

Contents

1. RSS 101
2. The Ecology of RSS Feeds
3. RSS and LINGUIST

Part 1. RSS 101

Feeds and aggregators - basic concepts.

Feeds and Aggregators

• Feed is a file in XML format that references recent items in a resource collection. A feed resides on a web server and is accessed via a URL.
• Aggregator is a client program that supports subscribing to feeds, polling for updates, and displaying new content to the user.
• Common types of aggregators are desktop (NewNewsWire, Shrook), web based (Bloglines, My Yahoo), and browser based (Firefox live bookmarks, Safari 2.0, IE 7).

Who Provides Feeds?

• online newspapers
• weather sites
• libraries
• online stores
• blogs
• social bookmarking sites
• podcasters
• (etc etc)

Static vs. On-Demand Feeds

• Static: Stored in a file that is updated in sync with the resource.
• Dynamic: Generated on demand.
  • Query feeds ("search" feeds) - flickr.com
  • Personalized feeds - netflix.com

Sample query feeds

• flickr.com: Everybody's tagged "cat" photos
• Associated RSS feed: http://flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne
  ?tags=cat&format=rss_200
• del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/tag/linguistics/
• Associated RSS feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/linguistics

Part 2. The Ecology of Feeds

Feeds are simple data objects that can be sliced and diced in various ways.

Feeds as Objects

• Structure: simple, regular
• Format: open, non-proprietary XML
• Access: URL
• Content: Serialized references to recent items in a resource collection

Implications of the Above

• Feeds are creatures of the wild
• It is easy to write software to:
  • Create feeds by scraping other content
    [Ben Hammersley's Google-to-RSS Service]
  • Convert feeds to other formats (e.g. HTML)
    [RSSxpress-Lite Channel Presentation Service]
  • Synthesize new feeds from existing feeds via merging or subsetting
    [lazytom's FeedJumbler]

Advantages for Providers

• Free advertising
• Improves search engine ranking
• Drives traffic to the provider's site

Part 3. RSS and LINGUIST

How can LINGUIST use RSS and related technologies to benefit itself and its users?

Measuring Traffic

• Difficult to get exact usage figures.
• Web server logs record hits - can get statistics from them.
• But: One hit on a feed may correspond to many users.
• Can republish feeds through feedburner.com, which will gather usage statistics.

Linguist query feeds?

• Issues:
  http://linguistlist.org/issues?author=Joe%20Shmoe
• RSS version:
  http://linguistlist.org/rss/issues?author=Joe%20Shmoe
• Site-wide query:
  http://linguistlist.org/search
  ?author=Smith&tags=french%20syntax
• RSS version:
  http://linguistlist.org/rss/search
  ?author=Smith&tags=french%20syntax

Personalized feeds?

• Requires users accounts (login/password)
• Can use unique key to authenticate URLs
• Netflix uses this system with its personalized RSS feeds
• Maybe also restrict advanced services (such as query feeds) to registered users.

Further Suggestions

• Register LINGUIST feeds with a feed indexing site. (e.g. feedburner.com)
• Feed autodiscovery via <link> elements.
• Site registration system for personalized services.
• Site-wide query facility, with RSS feeds.

Acknowledgment and Final Notes

This slide show was constructed using Eric Meyer's S5 Slide Show System.

The slide show itself can be viewed at http://jremmers.org/RSS/LINGUIST.html.

The Wikipedia RSS entry is a good starting point for learning about RSS.

See also my Furl collection of RSS links and my del.icio.us rss collection.