RSS Feeds -- Finding Them Automatically

It's always weird to watch exploding memes (or maybe they're memes which have hit their tipping point.) Anyway, I'm going to start hollering about RSS again. If you're sick of it you can skip to the next item or check out the LLRX article on RSS for non-techies at http://www.llrx.com/features/rssforlibrarians.htm .

One of the disadvantages of RSS files is that they're so difficult to find. But within the last week or so several clever people have been addressing that issue and leading to the development of a (technique? idea? theory?) called RSS auto-discovery.

You can get an idea of it at http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/1475 . The idea is that a Web wrangler could use the "Link" element on their main page to point toward its RSS file, enabling search engines to find it easily. (You can get more information on the Link element at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#edef-LINK ). Having a standard way of specifying RSS files (instead of just linking to them any old way) has advantages for human browsers, as you'll see below.

Though it's not clear who started this idea, people are running with it. Mark Pilgrim has a whole page of information about this idea at http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/05/31.html . As he reports, several weblogging tools like Radio Userland and Movable Type are adding the Link elements to their templates so they will be automatically added. Many collections of RSS feeds, including NewsIsFree and Syndic8, have added the Link element to their feed information pages.

I hear you. So What? What's in this for me? Mark has pulled this all together with bookmarklets for AmphetaDesk, Radio, and fyuze (You can get the bookmarklets from the diveintomark.org URL above.). I tested the one for AmphetaDesk. Basically you run AmphetaDesk and then just visit a site that contains a large collection of feeds. (I used http://www.newsisfree.com .) When you see a feed you want, click on the bookmarklet and it'll be automatically added to your AmphetaDesk setup. Droooool.

If I had a better brain I'd mush this idea up with some Google API programming and see what happened. Unfortunately I can't do that without some serious thinking, but I will add these new LINK elements to my Web pages.

Posted to Internet-Technology-RSS