RSS

Ironically, you may be using RSS to read about Aaron Swartz

 RSS, Uncategorized
Jan 132013
 

The brilliant mind, righteous heart of Aaron Swartz will be missed — MSNBC by Chris Hayes, @chrislhayes, 10:19 am on 01/13/2013

Aaron was one of those preternaturally brilliant, precocious hackers who, at the age of 14, co-developed the Really Simple Syndication or RSS web protocol that is the key component of much of the web’s entire publishing infrastructure.

By 19, he’d co-founded a company that would merge with Reddit, a user-generated social news site that is now one of the most highly trafficked news sites in the world. He read voraciously, uploading reviews of the dozens of books he read a year to his blog, and wrote beautifully and prolifically. He worked as a progressive activist with the group Progressive Change Campaign Committee and founded Demand Progress, which was instrumental in fights to keep the internet open and free, and in the battle to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act.

He developed the architecture for the Creative Commons licensing system ….

You should also know that at the time of his death Aaron was being prosecuted by the federal government and threatened with up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines for the crime of — and I’m not exaggerating here — downloading too many free articles from the online database of scholarly work JSTOR. Aaron had allegedly used a simple computer script to use MIT’s network to massively download academic articles from the database that he himself had legitimate access to, almost 5 million in all, with the intent, prosecutors alleged, of making them freely available. You should know that despite JSTOR declining to press charges or pursue prosecution, federal prosecutors dropped a staggering 13 count felony indictment on Aaron for his alleged actions.

The brilliant mind, righteous heart of Aaron Swartz will be missed — MSNBC

Aaron Swartz’s family condemns MIT and US government after his death | Technology | guardian.co.uk

The family of celebrated internet activist Aaron Swartz has accused prosecutors and MIT officials of being complicit in his death, blaming the apparent suicide on the pursuit of a young man over “an alleged crime that had no victims”. …

Aaron Swartz’s family condemns MIT and US government after his death | Technology | guardian.co.uk

 Posted by at 10:43 am

HTG Explains: What Is RSS and How Can I Benefit From Using It? – How-To Geek

 amazon, fb, google, RSS
Jun 112012
 

RSS is a fantastic tool. The link has a good introduction. Instead of visiting sites, let the content come to you (but not in email).. mjh

HTG Explains: What Is RSS and How Can I Benefit From Using It? – How-To Geek

If you’re trying to keep up with news and content on multiple web sites, you’re faced with the never ending task of visiting those sites to check for new content. Read on to learn about RSS and how it can deliver the content right to your digital doorstep.

HTG Explains: What Is RSS and How Can I Benefit From Using It? – How-To Geek

 Posted by at 2:31 pm

Getting Web Content into Facebook

 Facebook, fb, linkedIn, RSS
Mar 092011
 

Those of us who write blogs (“content creators,” in nerd-speak) or post photos to popular services face a challenge: How best to get Facebook users (FB) to see that content. I’ve been using RSS Graffiti for months. (At the end of this, I’ll note an alternative.)

I write for three blogs, as well as, post photos to Flickr and Picasa. I’m happy with those five separate areas of content, each for different reasons. I want the random discovery of content by strangers, but I also want my Facebook friends to see, Like, Share, and comment on my work. On the other hand, I don’t want to create content solely within FB, where it is inaccessible to most Web users. RSS Graffiti is a free FB application that easily pulls content from the RSS feeds that each of my blogs, etc, create automagically.

The figure below shows a portion of the RSS Graffiti interface with my two photo galleries. I paused the Picasa feed because I now create a blog entry for everything I post on Picasa; if that Picasa feed were on, there would be semi-duplication of content with the blog feed (not shown). I actually worry about overwhelming FB friends with content.

image

RSS Graffiti has more screens than I want to document here – it is highly customizable, although that requires some effort and experimentation. Below is a portion of the configuration for my Flickr feed (five tabs and numerous fields). These myriad options overcome my objections to FB’s native RSS feed handling (more on that in a second). However, to begin using RSS Graffiti, you only need to copy the RSS Feed URL from a website and paste it in the field below Basics; everything else is optional.

image

My purpose here is to draw the attention of those who want to inject content from external sources into FB – for good, not evil. This could easily be overused and abused, which would ultimately mean your friends will stop looking at your updates. With that warning in mind, be aware that you don’t have to own the RSS feed and almost every site you visit generates at least one RSS feed. As consumers of Web content, we all should learn more about RSS.

Note: You can access Facebook’s own RSS feed function from your Notes page. When I stopped using it months ago, I had several gripes about the way FB processed RSS feeds (it may have changed since then). You can only subscribe to one RSS feed through FB’s function, although you can get around that limit by using RSS feed aggregators such as Google Reader and Feedburner. You have no control over how FB formats the RSS feed, which FB did badly, at the time. Finally, there is no control over when FB reads the feed – I waited too long for random updates. RSS Graffiti overcomes each of these objections.

 Posted by at 4:17 pm

RSS – Really Simple?

 RSS, Web
Jun 032006
 

I have been curious about RSS (Really Simple Syndication — among others) for quite some time. One can view accessing or obtaining information as one of two processes: push or pull. Email, for example, pushes information into your inbox. When you browse the Web, you mostly pull information to you. But, what if you want information from a number of sources and don’t want to visit each one in turn? RSS allows you to pull information in a different way. Perhaps more importantly, it allows you to aggregate “feeds” (RSS headlines and more).

There are a few things I don’t like about RSS. First, it still isn’t quite easy enough (object, if you wish). Sure, what could be easier than clicking that orange icon in Firefox. What, you’ve never noticed that? That’s part of the problem. Perhaps you have noticed RSS icons or links on Web pages (on this page, for example). If you’ve ever clicked one, you probably got a nearly unintelligible page (of XML).

Now, like most things, a little knowledge makes everything better. RSS has devoted fans who can make the case for it better than I can. I will say I have no objection to someone using RSS — I’m not calling it or them stupid or evil.

Well, let me say one objection to someone using RSS. As a Web designer, I work hard to create a beautiful environment for you (please don’t laugh). I want you to see my site and enjoy all of it. RSS takes my content, reformats it (often plainly) and you see nothing of my design. I know — it isn’t all about me. Still, I prefer to visit most Web sites directly and see their differences — RSS seems to homogenize the Web, which is part of its efficiency.

One of the things that is helping make RSS accessible to more users is blogging. Most blogging systems (I use WordPress) generate RSS files automagically; many also make “subscribing” to the “feeds” easier.

Further, the browsers are getting better with RSS. I noted Firefox “discovers” RSS feeds and, perhaps subtly, makes it easy to create a “live bookmark” to the feed. Firefox users should also look at the Sage extension, which I like more.

The big change will probably be when Microsoft Vista, the next generation of Windows, becomes widely used. Microsoft has decided to incorporate RSS into the operating system. If they make that easy, I may be looking back at this entry and shaking my head at my ignorance (it won’t be the first time).

Let me suggest that a good place to start researching RSS is with this longish article: RSS – A Primer for Publishers and Content Providers

In another location, I’ve asked RSS fans to ‘represent’: jfleck at inkstain » Blog Archive » RSS

peace, mjh

 Posted by at 11:31 am

What Are Webfeeds (RSS), and Why Should You Care?

 RSS, Web
Jul 222004
 

What Are Webfeeds (RSS), and Why Should You Care?: Contentious Weblog by AMY GAHRAN

What Are Webfeeds (RSS), and Why Should You Care?

This 12-part tutorial is a major revision and expansion of an article I originally published Oct. 18, 2003 under the title “What Is RSS and Why Should You Care?”

Firefox users should look for an extension called ‘Sage.’

The rest of Amy Gahran’s blog is worth a good look. mjh

 Posted by at 7:41 pm

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

 RSS, Web
Dec 082003
 

Sharing Your Site with RSS by Jason Cook, www.webmonkey.com, 14 May 2003

Two things: RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an easy way for sites to share headlines and stories so that other sites can integrate them into their pages. Additionally, some savvy surfers use special RSS aggregators — kind of like mini-browsers — to speedily flip through the latest news and links from dozens of sites.

See www.feedreader.com for one of these ‘mini-browsers’.

Here’s another good beginning article with links to more resources:
Lockergnome’s RSS Resource

revised 12/13/03

 Posted by at 7:21 pm

RSS = Real Simple Syndication

 RSS, Z - Other
Oct 272003
 

PCWorld.com – RSS: Hot Fix for Info-Junkies

Armed with an RSS newsreader–a simple cheap or free application–you can get headlines from your favorite news sites or receive an aggregated news feed on a single topic, like Iraq or computer software, that includes articles from many Web sources.

The feed reader periodically updates the display to pull in new stories; you simply click a headline to read the article. Delightfully, the feeds themselves cost end users nothing.

See the link on the second page for feedreader, a free RSS newsreader. You can use this (or a similar program) to get updates from this weblog among many others. mjh

 Posted by at 9:37 pm