RSS & BLOGS

A new way to
“Communicate & Collaborate”

Prepared By:-
Akhil
Topics to Cover
 What is a blog?
 Structure of a blog post
 History of blogs
 Why are blogs important?
 Communication & Collaboration
 Blogging in academics
 RSS feeds
 RSS aggregators
 Signing up for an RSS aggregator
What is a Blog?
 Terms/Slang to Know:
 A Blog is short for “web log”
 A Blogger is someone who keeps or updates a
blog.
 Blogging is the act of updating a blog.

 An automated, independent publishing system using

software or hosted web space to easily create and
update content.
Content and Purposes of Blogs

 Varies greatly.
 Links and commentary about a specific area of interest.
 News about a company, a person, or an idea.
 Diaries, photos, poetry, essays, fiction, personal rants.

 Blog posts are like instant messages to the web.

With the greatest of ease, and without interference
by publishers, editors, or the physical page, anyone
can disseminate opinions, thoughts, and ideas.
Structure of a Blog
Date Tom Mayo’s HealthLawBlog
Header
Links
Title

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Illegal immigrants and emergency care.
As previously mentioned here, CMS has announced its plan to
implement a provision of the Medicare reform law that is intended to
provide some relief for states hit with high costs for providing
emergency medical treatment for undocumented immigrants. As
reported today's N.Y. Times, one of the
posted by Tom Mayo, 5:19 PM | link | (0) comments
Post
Author Comments
Time Stamp
BRIEF History of Blogs
 Blogs began as an online record with commentary of the
sites one visited on the Web.
 Annotated favorites list.
 Bloggers had to know HTML.
 In 1999, several sites began offering hosted blogging
services.
 Including http://www.blogger.com
 Blogs increased from thousands to millions.
 Easy to use, easy to sign up.
 Free.
 No knowledge of HTML necessary.
 Hosted by someone else.
Why are blogs important?
 10 million blogs by the end of 2004
 Not all active or substantive in content
 Blogs are indexed by search engines.
 Replacing email and website as forms of
communication.
 Photoblogging and “live coverage” of events.
 Blog content can be syndicated by RSS feeds.
 Microsoft is getting in the game.
 “The ultimate idea is that you should get the
information you want when you want it.”
Potential Uses for Blogs
 Significant information resources.
 Be a leader in your field. Start a blog detailing
your opinions and experiences. Comment upon
other blogs or news items.
 Department, institutional, agency blogs. What’s
new at/with….
 Easy and quick way to publish news and events.
 Personal uses.
Communication & Collaboration

 Scholars and academic institutions are catching

on to blogging.
 Freedom of tone.
 Low cost – basically free in most cases.
 Instantaneous nature of blogging versus traditional
publishing routes.
 Instant peer review.
 Bigger audience.
 Communication and connection.
 Exchange of ideas within and outside of academia.
Blogging in Academics
 Harvard, University of Minnesota.
 Communities of bloggers.
 Undergraduates to faculty.
 Tie-in with courses, departments, and colleges.
 Facilitates exchange of ideas and opinions in a
thoughtful, interactive way.
 Modern communication: Fast, easy, and
electronic.
What is RSS?
 RSS – Rich Site Summary or Really Simple
Syndication.
 What is it? A specific kind of XML-code that tracks and
syndicates headlines and new content on a website or a blog.
 A (relatively new) way for people who publish content
online to notify people interested in that content whenever
fresh content is made available online.
 Seen this around?
 In a sense, you are “feeding” users or readers your content…
so the term “RSS feeds.”
 What does an RSS feed look like?
Really Simple Syndication

 Earliest use appears in 1999

 Simple way to publish regularly updated listings of
news content
 Adopted by “bloggers” as the mechanism to
publish and disseminate their content
 Also known as “Rich Site Summary”
What to Look For?
RSS Example
 Check out the feeds of the website :
www.akhilkumar.info
 Feed Submission

 How would I do this for myself?

 Free Online Services
 Blogger
 Typepad
 How would I do this at the office?
 Organizational Blogging Software
 Movable Type
 Wordpress
Publishing your own RSS
You Need an Aggregator
 To make use of RSS feeds, to make sense of the
nasty code, you must sign up for an aggregator or
news feeder.
 Aggregators display RSS feeds in a format that the
average human can read, understand and use.
 Popular aggregators:
Aggregation Tools
 Subscriptions are portable
 Desktop Applications
 RSS Bandit
 OWL
 FeedDemon
 Web-Based Tools
 Bloglines
 Google Reader
 Integration with existing Software
 MS Outlook RSS Plugins (numerous choices)
 Live Bookmarks in Firefox
 Google Personal Homepage
What Kind of Content is
Available?
 News
 Government Information
 Database Queries
 Commentary
 Local Information
 Upcoming Events
 Organizational
Information
Government Information

 Patents
 Ex: Drug Patents
 SEC Filings
 Agency Information
 FDA
 Department of Education
 Judicial Nominations
News Content
 NY Times, BBC, CNN, Yahoo, Reuters, Google
 http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html
 http://news.yahoo.com/rss/
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/rss/default.stm
 http://today.reuters.com/rss/newsrss.aspx
 http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&topic=w
 Library News
 Library Journal
 Legal News
 The Virtual Chase
 References
 RSS Tutorial :

http://www.palinet.org/rss/toti/tsstutorial.htm

 RSS Portal:

http://allrss.com/

 RSS points And Theory: wikipedia