RSS
WWW User
School of Computer Science
2007-2008

Aims
• Knowing how RSS works
• Recognising feed presence in web sites
• Providing contents using RSS
• Using a RSS reader
• registering in an online reader
• subscribing to interesting feeds
• feeds managing

more than 70 mill blogs
more than 1.3 mill posts per day
more than 54.000 posts per hour
and postcasts, photograhpies, videos...
(Octavio Rojas. Web 2.0. Manual (no oficial) de uso)

How can we
pay attention to
favourite sites updates?

What is RSS?
• Really Simple Syndication
• Subscription to dynamic contents
• Push technology:
information came to us

How does it work?
• When an article is published, the RSS
captures the changes
• Periodically, a reader checks for updates in
the subscribed feeds

RSS in plain english

What is a feed?
• similar to bookmarks
• an XML file
• automatically updated when web site
changes

RSS 2.0 labels
<rss>
<channel>
<title>Name of the site</title>
<link>web address</link>
<description>Short description</description>
<item>
<title>Post title</title>
<link>Post URL</link>
<description>Post contents</description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

How can I suscribe?
By clicking
on the symbols
that appear
in the web sites

RSS Readers
• Programs to read feeds
• On-line: using a browser
• Clients: locally installed
• Extensions for browsers or e-mail clients

Additional services
• Clipping
• to save favourite annotations
• Playlist
• summary of favourite feeds
• Sharing subscriptions: blogroll
• Searching

Free RSS Readers
on line
Bloglines Google Reader
Rojo Netvibes

Free RSS Readers
on line
NetNewsWire
RSSOwl
(NewsGator)