1. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Providing And Using News Feeds: How RSS Can Help Brian Kelly UK Web Focus UKOLN University of Bath Email B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk URL http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ UKOLN is supported by: Acknowledgements Thanks are given to Roddy MacLeod, EEVL, Heriot-Watt University for his longstanding promotion of use of RSS within the JISC and library sectors and input to this talk Acknowledgements Thanks are given to Roddy MacLeod, EEVL, Heriot-Watt University for his longstanding promotion of use of RSS within the JISC and library sectors and input to this talk http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/uksg-2005/

2. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 2 Contents Introduction The need for better ways of disseminating news A simple lightweight solution – RSS RSS viewing tools RSS creation tools Beyond news - exploiting RSS's potential The caveats (technical issues, content issues, …) Futures Conclusions Group discussion Introduction

3. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 3 About Me Brian Kelly: UK Web Focus – a Web advisory post for UK HE and FE and cultural heritage communities Involved in Web work since January 1993, when helped set up UK HE's first (?) institutional Web service at Leeds University JISC representative on W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Based at UKOLN – a national centre of expertise in digital information management Funding by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Council) Introduction

4. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 4 About You What do you do? Work in library (academic, public, …) Work for publisher Other HE/FE Other commercial sector What do you know about news feeds, RSS, …? Read RSS feeds Publish RSS feeds: Using simple tools Advanced developer (have read specs, developed RSS software, …) What's RSS? Introduction

5. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 5 What Do You What To Gain? What do you want to gain from the session? What topics would you like to be addressed? Introduction

6. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 6 An Interactive Approach In light of (potential) high level of expertise in subject by some participants: Session will encourage active participation Feel free to contribute examples of work you are involved in, etc. Session will aim to explore common challenges Introduction

7. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 7 What Do We Want To Do? We provide quality information services and we want all to have rich access to services & know about them. So we: Enhance service Run mailing lists Contribute to mailing list Run events Publish newsletters Provide Web sites Ask others to include news on their Web sites, newsletters, email lists, … …. But: In what ways? Too much information, too much spam Not everyone attends Not everyone reads Time-consuming to process Limited user choice What we would like to do is minimise human bottlenecks in processing 3 rd party context for use on Web and email, whilst allowing users more flexibility in handling information overload Background

8. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 8 Let’s Kill Email! Email: We’re all familiar with it We all use it (even when away at conferences) But: Why send messages which time-out when many users will read them too late? Why not use delivery channels which are spam-free? Why not use delivery channels which are more suited to receiving information (as opposed to discussions)? Why not use a solution which provides richer structure/metadata Why not allow users to select their preferred channels? Why not allow users greater customisation (e.g. don’t deliver information when I’m on holiday) Background

9. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 9 Initial Attempts Initial attempts at richer solutions e.g. BBC News: Solutions included: Scrolling Tickertape news display on your PC JavaScript to pull news items to your Web site Subscriptions to email alerts Content often generated from single source User has choice: chose content; no tickertape displayed when away; suspend email; … There was a clear need for an open solution, which would allow use of standard authoring tools and viewers by any news provider Background But: Accessibility problems (JavaScript dependency,..) Proprietary Everyone else needs to replicate software, … No benefit of scale through standard solutions

10. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 10 RSS – A Universal Solution RSS: Initially developed as syndication tool for My.Netscape portal Potential for this lightweight solution quickly recognised Blogging software integrated RSS feeds Many RSS readers and authoring tools developed RSS becomes part of JISC's Information Environment (IE)

11. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 11 RSS Viewers Lots of different ways of reading RSS news feeds, which allows user to select preferred approach: Web page Tickertape Pop-up alerts Bookmark interfaces Email (email-style) interface …

12. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 12 RSS Aggregators An RSS aggregator: Brings together RSS news feeds from various sources We've seen desktop & Web aggregators designed for use by individuals (my favourite services, my weather report, my stocks and shares, …) A server-based RSS aggregator: Allows service provider to aggregate news feeds for its communities Feeds for student on a particular course Feeds related to a funding body We will now see the JISC RSS Aggregator, designed to provide easy access to news from JISC services and facilitate sharing and community building across the JISC community Viewing RSS

13. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 13 The JISC RSS Aggregator JISC RSS Aggregator: Provides single point of access to news from JISC services Efficient (limited management needed centrally) Well-designed, attractive interface Developed by EEVL (Geir Granum and Malcolm Moffat) http://www.eevl.ac.uk/jiscnews/

14. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 14 RSS File Format RSS is a powerful, lightweight format. How do you create RSS news feeds? Creating RSS RSS Channels BBC News | UK | UK Edition http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/u k/default.stm BBC UK News updated every minute of every day RSS News Items Tony Blair quits over Iraq Tony Blair quits the cabinet, accusing George W Bush of breaking promises over UN's role in rebuilding Iraq. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/uk_politics /3019871.stm NOTE: Trust is an important aspect of news feeds – is the supplier of news embedded in your Web pages, providing accurate information – the above news is not true!

15. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 15 RSS Authoring Tools Many ways of creating RSS files: By hand (don't!) Dedicated RSS tools Web-based tools Blogs (see SOSIG) Generation of RSS and HTML from database Transformation of HTML  RSS (or vice versa) Externally-hosted value-added service providers e.g. Feedburner … Creating RSS http://www.sosig.ac.uk/news/

16. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 16 RSSxpress RSSxpress: Combined RSS viewer, editor, directory and validator Developed at UKOLN Widely used for creating RSS files http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/ Creating RSS Note: UKOLN planning updates & new RSS tools. Suggestions welcome. Similar tool: RSS Configurator - < http://www.prs-ltsn.ac.uk/rss/rssconfig.html >

17. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 17 Publishing Your RSS Feed When publishing your RSS feed: Save file at stable location on Web server e.g. Validate file (please!) e.g. using RSSxpress interface, etc. (Broken news is bad news!) Ensure Web administrator gives correct MIME type for.xml,.rss, … file Include in your HTML news page so that tools like FireFox dynamic bookmark can be used (see later) For completely new feed register at RSSxpress, JISC Aggregator, Syndic8, etc. View feed in various types of RSS viewers Creating RSS Validators available at,, etc.

18. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 18 Viewing RSS Feeds (1) RSS may be used in ways you have not considered: Search results Email … If you include a tag, users can automatically add a dynamic bookmark to Firefox

19. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 19 Viewing RSS Feeds (2) An example of an email interface to an RSS file: This shows Thunderbird open source email client Similar software (but licensed) available for MS Outlook User can chose whether to view Web page or just text This has been described as “authenticated spam- free opt-in email” Note that with some RSS tool the user can choose to view text-only. Great for the user – but should you worry about your logo not being displayed?

20. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 20 Viewing RSS Feeds (3) "If you've got a late-model wireless device and want to try accessing your favorite syndicated content on-the-go, give FeedBurner's Feed Reader (MFR) a test drive: Supports feeds in all major formats (RSS, RDF, and Atom) Smart "If-Modified-Since" content retrieval conserves wireless bandwidth … Other examples of viewers for PDAs: Plucker Hand/RSS for Palm See Note this is intended as a illustration and is not a product endorsement! The software has not been tested and it is not known if it complies with appropriate standards. Viewing RSS

21. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 21 What The Publishers Are Doing IoP provide RSS feeds for: Events Features Jobs Latest papers news Press releases … http://syndication.iop.org/?cat Uses Of RSS

22. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 22 What The Libraries Are Doing Many libraries, especially in the US, are taking a similar high profile approach to RSS http://www.hclib.org/pub/search/XML/LibnNotes/GetXML.cfm? Topic=Consumer%20Information&Display=Consumer%20Information http://www.hclib.org/pub/search/XML/LibnNotes/GetXML.cfm? Topic=Consumer%20Information&Display=Consumer%20Information Note that the URL of the RSS file shows it is being generated by a Cold Fusion script Uses Of RSS

23. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 23 Beyond News Syndication What else can RSS be used for? General content syndication Syndication of search results Building personalised interfaces Tracking items Items for sale Viewing email … Uses Of RSS

24. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 24 Developments in the Public Sector "HubMed is PubMed on Steroids": Taken from RSS In Government Blog HubMed: RSS syndication of searches Integrated with Blog (Biolog) for sharing annotated abstracts http://www.hubmed.org/

25. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 25 What Else Can You Do? (1) Syndication: You have some content which you want others to automatically include in their Web site (e.g. UKSG conference details) Tracking: You want users to be able to track progress of their items (currently available for Parcel tracking; how about book order; fault reports; …) Personalised Interfaces: Weather from weather service; stocks and shares from FTSE; …. Uses Of RSS

26. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 26 What Else Can You Do? (2) Email: You can read your GMail email using an RSS viewer Lsoft apparently have similar plans for reading their archives (could be used with JISCMail archives Awasu RSS reader has free plugin for reading email

27. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 27 What Else Can You Do? (3) Search Amazon: Third parties services can be used to generate RSS results for Amazon searches See:

28. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 28 What Else Can You Do? (4) Search Amazon: Third parties services can be used to generate RSS results for price changes on Amazon http://www.watchcow.net/> Further info

29. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 29 Content Issues Accuracy, relevance, timeliness, … of content Display of content (don't make assumptions) Context of content (e.g. MLA news from UKOLN) Quality Issues Technical Issues Important to validate RSS file Incorrect syntax / characters may or may not be displayed Be aware of non-standard characters (e.g. £, —, ©,...) Note that special characters (e.g. ) may cause problems Avoid clever tricks – keep to standard (may work in some cases but not others http://www.eevl.ac.uk/onestepjobs/

30. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 30 What Does RSS Stand For? RSS naming and versions can be very confusing Caveats RSS 0.9 Developed by Netscape to allow 3 rd party content to be embedded in My.Netscape portal RSS=Rich Site Summary Issues Which to go for? (JISC IE uses RSS 1.0) Really Simple Syndication is probably the best abbreviation (RSS 1.0 abbreviation is recursive and confusing) Issues Which to go for? (JISC IE uses RSS 1.0) Really Simple Syndication is probably the best abbreviation (RSS 1.0 abbreviation is recursive and confusing) RSS 1.0 RSS=RDF Site Summary RSS – great idea! Let's make it extensible and part of Semantic Web; so we'll use XML RDF. RSS 2.0 RSS=Really Simple Syndication RSS – great idea! Let's keep it simple. So we'll use XML.

31. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 31 Limitations Of The RSS Format Limitations Of RSS Format RSS's strengths are based on its simplicity The simplicity means limited display capabilities and functionality You can't apply rich formatting or embed hyperlinks, search interfaces, … in RSS feeds Actually can by using XML escaping techniques Such tricks make work in some viewers (e.g. browsers) but could cause problems in others Do you want to repeat the problems caused during the browser wars in late 1990s (pages looked and behaved differently in different browsers)? Aim to maximise interoperability rather than maximise functionality Caveats

32. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 32 Limitations Of RSS Statistics RSS Statistics There are lies, dammed lies and Web statistics! Be wary of RSS statistics Issues RSS aggregators may harvest resources which are not read RSS items may be retrieved while your PC is left on over the weekend 40% of my visitors now get information via RSS. What does this mean? What are the implications? Caveats

33. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 33 Beyond Text (1) Podcasting: Automated delivery mechanism for transferring sound files to you MP3 player (or PC) Concept invented in 2004 Exponential growth Based on RSS 2.0 (plus enclosures) Is it of interest? Accessibility Learning processing information on the move Twenty-nine percent of US adults who own MP3 players like [the] iPod say they have downloaded podcast programs from the Internet, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found... more than 6 million people are listening to a form of communication that emerged only last year …. See Wikipedia entry Futures

34. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 34 Beyond Text (2) On 5 April 2005 the Bibliocasting list was announced: ".. dedicated to discussion of streaming media in library environment. This list grows out of increasing popularity of "Podcasting,".. use of RSS.. to download audio programs (like audio blogs) to computers and MP3 players. So what to post on the list? Examples of how libraries can build on the growing excitement of Podcasting; Questions on how libraries can use podcasting and other multimedia information they create to promote themselves and provide better service; … We have also set up a podcast for the list...that's right, you can listen to the list. Each post is transformed from text-to-speech, and syndicated using RSS. Futures

35. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 35 RSS & Podcasts RSS feed of automated text-MP3 conversion of email messages on biblio list: “… can you image anything more boring to do with an iPod”? But this led to Andy Powell’s experiment last week: Take UKOLN news item Use festival to convert to WAV and lam to covert to MP3 (open source utilities) Now have an MP3 sound file Potential of this idea: Sound version of news available to blind users (avoiding reading navigational elements, etc.) Use with RSS Podcast to deliver automatically to MP3 player Potential for application with dynamic RSS feeds (e.g. new Google search results, info on Glastonbury tickets on sale on eBay below chosen price, …)

36. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 36 Integrating RSS & Podcasts Awasu: An RSS reader & Podcasting client Also has plugins for: IMAP/POP email Alerts for searches … Thoughts: We once wanted a Web interface to everything Do we want an RSS interface to new stuff? Thoughts: We once wanted a Web interface to everything Do we want an RSS interface to new stuff?

37. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 37 Related Standards (1) We have discussed RSS and RSS Also relevant: Atom: Proposal to merge RSS See and OPML: Outline Processor Markup Language Can be used to manage (e.g export/import) groups of RSS feeds See Futures

38. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 38 Related Standards (2) Other related standards: iCal: Syndication standard for event information Example: click on iCal file for UKSG dates and date automatically added to your calendar Used by CETIS See NewsML Heavyweight standard for syndicating news "NewsML is designed to provide a media-independent, structural framework for multi-media news." Used by news profession (e.g. Reuters) Includes embargo deadlines, version control, etc. See Futures

39. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 39 Conclusions RSS: Powerful lightweight solution for news syndication Provides users with flexibility in how they choose to receive news More than just news – potential for richer syndication of content, dynamic content, … Quality of content important in ensuring end users trust the content (of possibly unknown providers) Need to develop appropriate publishing procedures for news

40. A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 40 Discussion Opportunity for general discussion