UKSG 2005 Conference:
Providing And Using News Feeds: How RSS Can Help

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Brian Kelly gave three briefing sessions on Providing And Using News Feeds: How RSS Can Help at the 28^th UKSG Annual Conference which was held at Heriot-Watt University on 11^th-13^th April 2005.

The briefing sessions were held on Monday 11^th April from 14:00 to 15:00, on Tuesday 12^th April from 14:00 to 15:00, and on Wednesday 13^th April from 10:30 to 11:30.

Materials

Slides
[HTML format] - [MS PowerPoint 97/2000 format]

Accompanying Paper
[HTML format] - [MS Word 97/2000 format] - About the paper

Note that a 300 word report on the workshop was produced for publication in the UKSG journal, Serials.

Briefing Session Leader Information Details

Name: Brian Kelly

Affiliation: UKOLN

Tel. No.: 01225 383943

Title Of Briefing Session: Providing And Using News Feeds: How RSS Can Help

Presentation Facilities Required: Networked PC (with Web browser and MS PowerPoint and desktop RSS clients - details to be provided later) and projection facility

Resume of Briefing Session Theme:
This briefing session will include:

The importance of news feeds and syndication
Background to news feeds and syndication standards
Relevant standards: RSS and Atom
RSS viewers
Models for creating RSS
RSS aggregators
Non-technical issues

Abstract:
Web sites are no longer self-contained; increasingly they provide information from third parties such as news from the BBC. Initially news feeds required proprietary interfaces. However the RSS standard was developed which allows access to multiple news feeds to be managed in a consistent manner. This standard is now supported devices such as PDAs and is being used in innovative ways. This briefing session gives an overiew of RSS and describes how it can be used by both providers and users of information sources.

Brief Biography:
Brian Kelly is UK Web Focus, a national post funded jointly by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) to provide advice, support and coordination for use of best practices on the Web to the UK higher and further education and cultural heritage sectors.

Brian is based at UKOLN, University of Bath. His responsibilities include monitoring Web developments, information dissemination, providing advice and representing JISC on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Acknowledgements

Thanks are given to Roddy MacLeod, EEVL for his contributions to this briefing session.

Useful Resources

Email vs. RSS Articles

Top 3 Reasons Why RSS Is Better Than Email for delivering your Ezine: Alex Barnett Blog, <http://www.hillsorient.com/articles/2005/04/192.html>
Email v RSS, let us move on...: Alex Barnett Blog, <http://blogs.msdn.com/alexbarn/archive/2004/05/22/139461.aspx>
RSS Vs Email: <http://blog.activsoftware.com/entry/12/rss_vs_email>
RSS in Reality: Not a Replacement for Email - Metrics & Best Practices: <http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2988>

Specifications

RSS 1.0: <http://purl.org/rss/1.0/>
RSS 1.0 Extensions (Standard Modules): <http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/standard.html>
RSS 1.0 Extensions (Proposed Modules): <http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/modules/standard.html>
RSS 1.0 + Events Demonstrator: <http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/admin/rss2calendar.asp>
RSS 2.0: <http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss>
Atom: <http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/syndication/atom-format-spec.php>
OPML: <http://www.opml.org/>
Standards Summit, Jun 2005: <http://www.newssummit.org/2005/program.asp>
The Courtship of Atom: <http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/05/19/deviant.html>
Metadata in XHTML2: <http://www.w3.org/2005/Talks/05-steven-Metadata-in-XHTML2/>

Directories Of RSS Feeds

Rich Site Services: Gerry McKiernan's list of Library RSS feeds, <http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/RSS.htm>
Syndic8: <http://www.syndic8.com/>
RSSXpress: <http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/>

Examples In Publishing Community

Institute of Physics Publishing: <http://syndication.iop.org/?cat>
Nature Publishing: <http://www.prismstandard.org/news/2004/0806.asp>

Other Examples

Essay On Personalised News Feeds: Strom.com, <http://strom.com/awards/404.html>
Syndication Of Amazon Prices: Watchcow.net, <http://www.watchcow.net/news/2004/10/full-frontal-firefox-integration.php>
Amazon Search: Uxus.net, <http://www.oxus.net/amazon/>
UPS (Parcel) Tracking: Strom.com, <http://www.shaftek.org/blog/archives/000225.html>
UPS (Parcel) Tracking: NetWizard's Blog, <http://www.shaftek.org/blog/archives/000225.html>; UPS & USPS Package Tracking With RSS, <http://www.young-technologies.com/Utilities/PackageTracking/>
Gmail Notification (using Atom): Gmail (Gmail account needed), <https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom>
Hurricane Alerter: National Weather Service, <http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutrss.shtml>
Games: RSS alerts for Bungie.net scores, <http://www.bungie.net/Help/page.aspx?section=Pages&subsection=Main&Page=6>

Podcasts

Podcasts: Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast>
Sound version of RSS item: Stories from the Web news item, UKOLN, <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/uksg-2005/stories-web.mp3>
Bibliocast List (available as Podcast): <http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/tiki-index.php?page=Research+Ideas>
Searching Podcasts: <http://www.tametheweb.com/ttwblog/archives/001243.html>

Audio Presentations

Libraries get hip to RSS: Future Tense, <http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2005/01/21.shtml>

Resources With Creative Commons Licence

An Introduction To RSS And News Feeds: QA Focus, UKOLN, <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/documents/briefings/briefing-77/>

Recent Additions

General

Introduction To RSS Wiki: <http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IntroToRSS>
The Fuss: <http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/wiki?TheFuss>

UKSG 2005 Conference:Providing And Using News Feeds: How RSS Can Help