RSS Circumvents Spam

Again, this process is spam-proof! That's the main reason why I'm an RSS evangelist.

Only the feed publisher can designate what information gets into the feed, and the only information the subscriber pulls down is what the publisher put there. When you subscribe to an RSS feed, you're not giving your e-mail address to anyone, they can't send you stuff you don't want.

This is a huge deal, especially for people who currently publish or subscribe to e-mail announcement services. Spam has become so pervasive that up to 38% of all opt-in e-mail messages (stuff that people have specifically asked to receive) get blocked by spam filters. My colleague Steve Outing wrote an excellent Editor & Publisher article on this problem last August.

Why RSS is Better Than E-mail Announcements

Just about everyone who publishes content online has some sort of e-mail announcement list. I do, too. Still, RSS is a great complement to e-mail announcements because it doesn't clutter people's in-boxes, it's easier to manage for recipients who get a lot of news online, it's spam-proof, and it's easier to manage than an e-mail list.

While not a lot of people know about RSS right now, it's getting popular quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple of years RSS becomes as widely known and used as the Web and e-mail.

RSS from a Content-Provider's Perspective

From a technical perspective, an RSS feed is a small data file (typically under 10KB) that a site (or subsection of a site, whatever) makes available, which lists the most recent items at that site. The file is in a simple dialect of XML; the file is meant to be autogenerated from the rest of the site -- say, from the site's content-management system, or by having a little program that just reads part of an HTML page (like the site's main page) and summarizes it in RSS.

By notifying people interested in your content, as well as Web sites that collect and package content announcements (called aggregators), you are "feeding" them your content – hence the term RSS feed.

refbase and RSS

refbase offers to convert almost[1] any query into a RSS feed which can be subscribed to using your favorite news reader.

[1] (regarding RSS support in refbase-0.8.0: you can't subscribe to RSS feeds whose queries include user-specific fields. This will hopefully be added in a future release.)

With refbase you can:

• use automatically created RSS queries
• create your own RSS queries

Benefits of RSS

So, what is the benefit for the usage within refbase?

• you will be immediatly informed about changes in refbase, e.g.:
  • when new records are added
  • records are changed in any way
  • a wanted keyword was added to the database and so on

In fact, any query can be turned into a RSS feed (besides user specific data).

That's why, RSS feeds are the optimal tool to be up to date with your database in any way!

Using prepared RSS queries

• If your are using an internet browser with RSS capability, you should be informed about available RSS queries, when you visit the start page.

RSS button in Firefox

• • Firefox:
    • you should see in the lower right corner of the browser window a symbol, which inform you about available RSS feeds
    • click on this icon to see a list of these feeds
    • now you should right-click on the desired entry and select copy link adress
    • with this link adress you can establish a new RSS feed in your newsreader

RSS link for query results

• If you executed a query (e.g. Simple Search, Advanced Search or SQL Search), you will find in the header (above the query results) a link called RSS (or track in refbase-0.8.0).
  • in the same way, as mentioned above
    • right-click on the RSS link and copy the link adress
    • with this link adress you can establish a new RSS feed in your newsreader

Creating your own RSS queries

You can create new and probably very specific RSS feeds (queries) by using the SQL search page.

This will be demonstrated by creating a RSS feed that contains all records that were added (or edited) today. This may seem tricky since, obviously, the date in the query would change every day.

Here's how to do it:

The MySQL query language offers a CURDATE() function that will insert the current date (like '2005-04-13') and which can be used within the WHERE clause of a SQL query. If you display the SQL search page of your refbase database and paste the following query into the SQL Query form:

SELECT author, title, year, publication, volume, pages FROM refs WHERE modified_date = CURDATE()
ORDER BY author, year DESC

the database will display all records that were edited today.

Here's an appropriate news feed for the refbase Demo Database:

http://demo.refbase.net/rss.php?where=modified_date%20%3D%20CURDATE%28%29&showRows=10

The resulting RSS feed will always display all those records of the refbase Demo Database that were edited during the current day. (If you don't see any records for this feed, chances are high that there were no changes to any records during this day -- of course, you could login and make some changes yourself... :)

To adopt this feed URL to your own database, simply replace http://demo.refbase.net with the URL to your own refbase base directory. You may also want to adopt the value of the showRows parameter which specifies how many records will be displayed. You can then use the resulting URL as feed URL when subscribing to this feed in your news reader.

Btw, the same could be done for records that were added to the database using the created_date field instead:

http://demo.refbase.net/rss.php?where=created_date%20%3D%20CURDATE%28%29&showRows=10

Aggregator

In general internet terms, a news aggregation website is a website where headlines are collected, usually manually, by the website owner. Examples of this sort of website are the Drudge Report, The Political Simpleton and the Huffington Post.^[1] There are also websites like Google News, where aggregation is entirely automatic, using algorithms which carry out contextual analysis and group similar stories together.^[2]

In computing, a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.

Contents 1 News aggregation websites 2 Software-based aggregation 2.1 Functions 2.2 Varieties 2.2.1 Web-based 2.2.2 Client software 2.2.3 Client libraries 2.3 Media aggregators 2.3.1 Broadcatching 2.4 Feed filtering 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

News aggregation websites

News aggregation websites started with sites like the Drudge Report, breitbart.com and the Huffington Post. Such websites differ from automated aggregation news sites by virtue of the selective process exercised at the human level, often mediated by political affiliation.^[2]

Software-based aggregation

Functions

Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites for updates, creating a unique information space or "personal newspaper". Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. The content is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the subscriber, as opposed to "pushed" with email or IM. Unlike recipients of some "pushed" information, the aggregator user can easily unsubscribe from a feed.

Aggregator features are frequently built into portal sites, Web browsers, and email programs.

The aggregator provides a consolidated view of the content in a single browser display or desktop application. Such applications are also referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators, news readers, or search aggregators. Aggregators with podcasting capabilities can automatically download media files, such as MP3 recordings. In some cases, these can be automatically loaded onto portable media players (like iPods) when they are connected to the end-user's computer.

Recently, so-called RSS-narrators have appeared, which not only aggregate text-only news feeds, but also convert them into audio recordings for offline listening.

The syndicated content an aggregator will retrieve and interpret is usually supplied in the form of RSS or other XML-formatted data, such as RDF/XML or Atom.

Varieties

The variety of software applications and components that are available to collect, format, translate, and republish XML feeds is a testament to the flexibility of the format and has shown the usefulness of presentation-independent data.

Web-based

The most commonly known web-based aggregators are reader applications on the web. These are meant for personal use and are hosted on remote servers. Because the application is available via the Web, it can be accessed anywhere by a user with an Internet connection.

More advanced methods of aggregating feeds are provided via AJAX coding techniques and XML components known as Web widgets. Ranging from full-fledged applications to small fragments of code that can be integrated into larger programs, they allow users to aggregate OPML files, email services, documents, or feeds into a single interface. Many customizable homepage and portal implementations provide such functionality.

In addition to aggregator services mainly for individual use, there are web applications that can be used to aggregate several blogs into one. One such variety—called planet sites—are used by online communities to aggregate community blogs in a centralized location. They are named after the Planet aggregator, a server application designed for this purpose.

Client software

Client software aggregators are installed applications designed to collect Web feed subscriptions and group them together using a user-friendly interface. The graphical user interface of such applications often closely resembles that of popular e-mail clients, using a three-panel composition in which subscriptions are grouped in a frame on the left, and individual entries are browsed, selected, and read in frames on the right.

Software aggregators can also take the form of news tickers which scroll feeds like ticker tape, alerters that display updates in windows as they are refreshed, web browser macro tools or as smaller components (sometimes called plugins or extensions), which can integrate feeds into the Operating System or software applications such as a Web browser.

Client libraries

Many programming languages have libraries that are able to download, process, generate and upload RSS feeds. Perl for example has several libraries in the XML::RSS name space of CPAN.

Media aggregators

Media aggregators are sometimes referred to as "Podcatchers" due to the popularity of the term "podcast" used to refer to a web feed containing audio or video. Media aggregators refer to applications, client software or Web based, which maintain subscriptions to feeds that contain audio or video media enclosures. They can be used to automatically download media, playback the media within the application interface, or synchronize media content with a portable media player.

Broadcatching

Several BitTorrent client software applications have added the ability to "broadcatch" torrents of distributed multimedia through the aggregation of web feeds.

Feed filtering

One of the problems with news aggregators is that the volume of articles can sometimes be overwhelming, especially when the user has many Web feed subscriptions. As a solution, many feed readers allow users to tag each feed with one or more keywords which can be used to sort and filter the available articles into easily navigable categories. Another option is to import the user's Attention Profile to filter items based on their relevance to the user's interests.