Emerging Technology: RSS Understanding and Using RSS Journalism 163 School of Journalism

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Emerging Technology RSSUnderstanding and
Using RSS Journalism 163School of Journalism
Mass CommJMC163Steve Sloansteve.sloan_at_sjsu.
eduhttp//sloantech.blogspot.com/
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Goals

• Define and Discuss Emerging Technology and where
  RSS fits into it
• Define key terms associated with RSS
• Provide an overview of the technologies
  associated with RSS
• Discuss how RSS, and related technologies, can be
  a way to manage information
• Discuss possible ways that RSS and related
  technologies may evolve
• Subscribe to and view an RSS feed

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RSS is an Emerging TechnologyWhat is Emerging
Technology?What are some other emerging
technologies?

• The adjective emerging has 3 meanings
• Coming into view
• Coming into existence
• Coming to maturity
• Internet Weblogging
• The read-write web
• Dan Gillmor, We the media
• User enabling software-hardware
• Common computers over 1 billion instructions a
  second (Super Computers, Lethal Weapons)
• Media creation applications such as iMovie,
  iPhoto etc.
• Portable devices
• OQO, Sony devices, Nokia and Scoble phones
• Always-on broadband in the home
• Cable-DSL
• Ubiquitous connectivity, digital dial tone
• 802.11, Cellular, RSS, (wireless plus download)

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• Emerging Technologies
• Portable Phones, an emerging technology of the
  past
• Portable phones once niche players in
  telecommunications
• Hard to use
• Cumbersome
• Expensive
• Now considered one of the three things everybody
  has
• Wallet/purse
• Keys
• Portable phone
• Continuing to change face of society, this tech
  is still emerging

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Understanding ETDisruptive Technology

• Sustaining verses emerging disruptive
  technologies
• Disruptive, in this case, means products and
  technologies that disrupt established solutions
  and markets, but sustain the underlying process
• This can be viewed as methods that offer easier,
  faster, better and/or cheaper ways of providing
  goods, services and information

See The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton M.
Christensen
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Impact of Disruptive Technologies

• At turn of the 20th Century the steam train was
  the transportation system of choice to meet
  underlying need to get from place to place
• Safe
• Comfortable
• Fast
• Relatively convenient
• Internal combustion engine could not compete in
  core market so it developed in a niche market
• Provided Personal Transportation

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Impact of Disruptive Technologies

• By end of 20th Century, internal combustion
  engine has replaced steam engine in what was
  steam engines core market
• Steam engine has become niche player
• Railroads have declined, focused on freight, and
  are no longer a predominate mode of long distance
  travel
• Disruptive Emerging Technologies
• Change markets, processes and paradigms
• Existing paradigms are not secure
• Start and develop in niche and often obscure
  markets

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Emerging Technologies and RSS

• Emerging technologies work together to improve
  underlying processes
• People need to create, communicate, collaborate
  and learn
• Wikis, weblogs, and podcasts generate RSS feeds
• RSS in turn enables repackaging and delivery of
  content to a variety of client platforms
• RSS is a subset of Emerging Technology
• Other technologies are a subset of RSS

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Understanding RSS

• All you need to know
• Keeping it simple!
• Good functional definitions
• RSS (pronounced "arr-ess-ess") is a web
  syndication protocol primarily used by news
  websites and weblogs
• Format for delivering summaries of regularly
  changing web content
• RSS is the format for repackaging and viewing
  content from changing websites

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Terms RSS

• Really Simple Syndication
• An Extensible Markup Language (XML) file
• An RSS file follows format rules
• RSS allows for content distribution and
  republication
• Primarily used by news sites and weblogs.
• Other definitions
• Rich Site Summary
• RDF Site Summary

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RSS A technical definition

• More than you need to know
• RSS is a file format that allows anyone with a
  website from large media companies to
  individual commentators to easily "syndicate"
  their content, similar to how comic strips and
  popular columns are syndicated by their owners to
  hundreds of newspapers. Except that on the Web,
  the RSS syndication is usually free, and the
  content that is syndicated is often not the full
  entry, but excerpts and links back to the
  originating website.

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Terms Weblog

• A weblog, Web log or simply a blog, is a web
  application which contains periodic, reverse
  chronologically ordered posts on a common
  webpage.
• Such a Web site would typically be accessible to
  any Internet use
• The changing nature of weblogs, and their reverse
  chronological ordering, makes them especially
  suited to RSS feeding

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Terms Feed

• A file document, in XML format, associated with a
  changing website, typically a weblog
• As with all markup language documents (HTML
  XML) RSS documents employ a set of tags
  (syntactic) that describe elements of the text
• Typically these files are updated dynamically as
  the site changes

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Terms Aggregation

• A program that reads an RSS or an Atom feed is
  called an aggregator
• Aggregator programs collect data from multiple
  feeds and consolidate them into a simple to
  navigate view
• Aggregators are typically constructed as
  extensions to a Web browser, as extensions to an
  email program, or as standalone programs
• An aggregator program is also called a reader

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Terms Syndication

• Making Web feeds available from a site so other
  people can display an updating list of content
  from it
• Focuses on changing content
• For example one's latest forum or weblog
  postings, etc.
• This originated with news and blog sites but is
  increasingly used to syndicate any information

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Terms XML

• Extensible Markup Language
• A general-purpose markup language for creating
  special-purpose markup languages
• It is a simplified subset of SGML
• Capable of describing many different kinds of
  data
• Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing
  of structured text and information across the
  Internet
• Languages based on XML allow programs to modify
  and validate documents in these languages without
  prior knowledge of their form
• This allows information sharing between many
  platforms
• The basis for the Microsoft .Net Framework

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How does RSS work?

• Feeder
• The XML format file is typically updated
  dynamically by a web application that lists and
  links changes to a web site
• Reader
• A program known as an RSS aggregator, or feed
  reader, checks RSS-enabled feeds on behalf of a
  user and displays any updated information that it
  finds

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Standards(RSS and Atom)

• Many flavors of RSS
• .9x, 1.x, 2.x
• Atom (a fork in the road!)
• Rooted in RSS
• Not backwardly compatible with any of the
  previous RSS versions
• Programs like Feedburner converts Atom to RSS

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RSS 2.0 and enclosures

• Allows for attachments called enclosures
• Podcasting
• Download based
• Videocasting
• Mediablogging
• Mobile blogging (moblogging)
• Download, not streaming

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Consuming an RSS feed

• Each feed is like a food
• Each feed is unique
• The reader is like a meal
• A well rounded meal is an aggregation of foods
• An RSS reader is the program that presents the
  information feeds
• The reader provides the user interface

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Feeds
A typical RSS feed
Headlines
Content
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Many faces of RSS
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How do RSS readers differ?

• Three basic types of client side applications
• Extensions to a Web browser
• Extensions to an email program
• Standalone programs
• Can be Web applications
• Can have widely different user interfaces

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Web based readers

• Google Reader
• Bloglines
• OPML Based
• Your RSS feeds can be shared
• You see what the people you read read
• My Yahoo
• NewsGator Online

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Local RSS readers

• Different 3rd party readers for PC MAC
• Hundreds of readers
• List too long to include

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The real-time web

• Technorati
• Uses RSS to track the popularity of weblogs by
  keeping track of links between them
• Users assign tags to their posts that are used to
  track similar posts
• Attention.xml
• Metadata that records and shares information on
  the "attention" users give to their RSS feeds and
  blogs.
• Extends the RSS reader by focusing on what people
  are reading and what information matches the
  profile of what you normally do read

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Mobile devices and RSS

• Portable devices with always-on connection will
  grow market for download based media
• Ability to create, post and access information
  nears ubiquity

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Secure RSS?

• Is there such a thing?
• Transparency not always desired
• Secure RSS 2.0 and SSH/SSL encryption
  technologies could be employed
• Private channels
• One to one
• One to few
• One to many
• RSS Digital Dial Tone

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Transparency

• By nature RSS is transparent
• This can be good or bad
• May violate privacy
• Invites the world into the classroom
• Some solutions for this
• Use application layer security (SSL/SSH)
• Secure RSS?
• Do we adapt to provide more transparency, or do
  we adapt the tool to provide greater security?
• Route around nature of Internet may make it
  difficult to not be transparent
• Like it or not, the world is getting more
  transparent and information ubiquity is becoming
  the norm
• Easier to spread information than to verify it
• Increases need for trusted sources

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RSS Pitfalls

• Get all the news you want, and none you dont?
• Folks can subscribe to channels that only fit
  their world view
• Increase polarization
• More Red vs. Blue
• Raising the bar on information compilation
• Increase expectations, stress and anxiety
• Aggregation aggravation
• Overload

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Future of RSS

• Will replace E-mail Web browser
• Social groups and human relations will be mapped
  and extend into RSS
• XFN, FOAF and Rojo
• Rich content can be delivered via download, using
  RSS
• Ability to deliver rich content will grow
• Podcasting
• Videocasting
• Mobile devices

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Get aggregating!

• www.newsgator.com
• Create an account
• Subscribe
• www.sjsu.edu/rss
• Itsupport.sjsu.edu
• You are aggregating

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My Favorite Feeds

• Bob Scoble The human aggregator
• TechmemeGabe Rivera
• David SifryTechnorati and the growth of the
  Blogosphere
• Down the AvenueRene Blodgette (PR with heart)
• Backup BrainDori Smith her husband

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Contact info and conversation

• SJSU
• Steve.sloan_at_sjsu.edu
• [phone]
• General
• Skype/AIM ssloansjca
• Web sloantech.blogspot.com
• [phone]
• S_sloan_at_mac.com

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Next steps

• Part 2 of RSS coming
• Podcasting!
• RSS Evolved
• This will be available on-line
• Jmc163.wordpress.com

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www.sjsu.edu/cats/2003/showcase/