What is RSS?
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is a approach to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, as well as sometimes content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines as well as notices for easy reading.
What problem does RSS solve?
Most people are interested in a lot of websites whose content changes on an irregular schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community as well as religious organization information pages, product information pages, medical websites, as well as weblogs. Repeatedly checking each website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious.
Email notification of changes was an early solution to this problem. Unfortunately, when you receive email notifications from several websites they are usually disorganized as well as can get overwhelming, as well as are often mistaken for spam.
RSS is a better approach to be notified of new as well as changed content. Notifications of changes to several websites are handled easily, as well as the results are presented to you well organized as well as distinct from email.
How does RSS work?
RSS works by having the website author preserve a list of notifications on their website in a standard way. This list of notifications is called an “RSS Feed”. People who are interested in finding out the latest headlines or changes can check this list. Special computer programs called “RSS aggregators” have been developed that instinctively access the RSS feeds of websites you care about on your behalf as well as organize the results for you. (RSS feeds as well as aggregators are as well as sometimes called “RSS Channels” as well as “RSS Readers”.)
Producing an RSS feed is very simple as well as hundreds of thousands of websites now provide this feature, including major news organizations like the New York Times, the BBC, as well as Reuters, as well as a lot of weblogs.
What information does RSS provide?
RSS provides very central information to do its notification. It is made up of a list of items presented in order from newest to oldest. each item usually consists of a simple title describing the item along with a more complete description as well as a link to a web page with the authentic information being described. Every so often this description is the full information you want to read (such as the content of a weblog post) as well as sometimes it is just a summary.
RSS aggregator programs
Think of an RSS aggregator as just a web browser for RSS content. RSS aggregators instinctively check a series of RSS feeds for new items on an ongoing basis, making it is possible to keep track of changes to several websites without needing to tediously read as well as re-read each of the websites yourself. They detect the additions as well as present them all together to you in a dense as well as useful manner. If the title as well as description of an item are of interest, the link can be used to quickly bring the related web page up for reading.
How do I find out if a website has an RSS feed?
It is getting more as well as more common for websites to have RSS feeds. They usually indicate the existence of the feed on the home page or main news page with a link to “RSS”, or sometimes by displaying an orange button with the letters “XML” or “RSS”. RSS feeds are as well as often found via a “Syndicate This” link. Text “RSS” links sometimes (there are lots of variations) point to a web page explaining the nature of the RSS feeds provided as well as how to find them. The buttons are often linked directly to the RSS feed file itself.
Once you know the URL of an RSS feed, you can provide that address to an RSS aggregator program as well as have the aggregator monitor the feed for you. Several RSS aggregators come preconfigured with a list to choose from of RSS feed URLs for popular news websites.
How is the RSS feed file produced?
Unless you are maintaining a website or want to create your own RSS feed for some other purpose, how the RSS feed is produced should not be of concern as well as you may skip this section.
The special XML-format file that makes up an RSS feed is usually created in one of a variety of ways.
Most large news websites as well as nearly all weblogs are maintained using special “content management” programs. Authors add their stories as well as postings to the website by interacting with those programs as well as as well as use the program’s “publish” facility to create the HTML files that make up the website. Those programs often as well as can update the RSS feed XML file at the same time, adding an item referring to the new story or post, as well as removing less recent items. Blog creation tools like Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, as well as Radio instinctively create feeds.
Websites that are produced in a more custom manner, such as with Macromedia Dreamweaver or a simple text editor, usually do not instinctively create RSS feeds. Authors of such websites either preserve the XML files by hand, just as they do the website itself, or use a tool such as Software Garden, Inc.’s ListGarden program to preserve it. There are as well as services that occasionally read requested websites themselves as well as try to instinctively determine changes (this is nearly all reliable for websites with a somewhat regular news-like format), or that let you create RSS feed XML files that are hosted by that service provider.
how can i make money with rss?
|
Google Reader is a content aggregator that is web-based and gathers RSS news feeds for offline or online reading. You don't even require a Google Reader …
|
|
Free download gpl rss aggregator Files at Software Informer – The number of information sources highly increases every day and so does the information …
|
|
RSS Aggregator descriptionRSS Aggregator – keep track of your favorite RSS feedsRSS Aggregator is a software utility that will bring news, journals, …
|
Do top US corporations use social media? Is the business world leveraging new media technologies to engage customers? The answer is definitely positive according to a new research study on 2009 Fortune 500 companies and their use of social media tools, like blogs and Twitter and authored by Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson.

Photo credit: Kheng Ho Toh and Dmitriy Shironosov
Each year Fortune Magazine compiles a list of the largest US corporations, which are named the Fortune 500 given their size and wealth. Due to the hugely influential role that these companies play in the corporate world, studying their use of new media technologies offers valuable insights into the future of social media communication technologies and approaches.
That is why every year, Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson take Fortune 500 companies as a testing ground to analyze the use of blogs and Twitter inside the corporate world.
In their latest report, published here, these are their reported highlights:
- Corporate blog use is steadily increasing, especially among the lower-ranked group of Fortune 500 corporations.
- All higher-ranked corporations have a Twitter account, as well as almost all other companies in the lower positions of the Fortune 500 list
- 86% of the 108 corporate blogs examined are linked to a Twitter account
- All 173 corporate Twitter accounts analyzed were active with replies and retweets in the past 30 days, showing a persistent interaction with other users.
- Podcasting and videos gained momentum among Fortune 500 companies.
What emerges from this research is the steady adoption of blogs and the explosive growth of Twitter among Fortune 500 companies, which emphasizes the increasing importance of social media inside the business world.
Specifically, this report suggests that Fortune 500 companies leverage social media technologies like blogs and Twitter as a mean to:
- Improve their communications approach,
- build internal knowledge,
- improve marketing and sales,
- guarantee long-term sustainability and growth.
Given that Fortune 500 companies stand as an established model for business success, it is indeed strategically critical for you to examine the data inside this report and extract valuable, solid insights that may help you develop an effective social media marketing strategy.
…

|
Online publishing is in many respects the new frontier for those who have a voice, a business, a desire to communicate or change things for the better. It potentially enables any individual connected to the net to be a two-way communication hub capable of sending out information and equipped with technologies to listen and respond. But to transform such revolutionary opportunity into a truly effective marketing vehicle, or into a sustainable online business resource, takes a lot more than what we are told on blogs or on the many sites promoting how easy and fast it is to become a successful online publisher.

Photo credit: Robin Good
In reality, transforming the online publishing opportunity into something that one can leverage to reach and realize his own dreams, it is much more complex and hard than we are told.
It takes lots of efforts, time, resources, expertise and skills which are not part, for the most, of our typical background and scholastic preparation. It requires the use of approaches and methods which sometimes counter what we have unconsciously learned through traditional media and that command lots of dedicated work to produce any significant results.
But even the most fundamental, basic concepts of effective communication, sometimes seem to escape even those that command so well technology and new trends. It may be because some of us really never got to stop and study the mechanisms behind it, or simply because what we have been often seeing reported as professional communication has been nothing but the wrong approach to getting a message across and starting a true conversation.
In these two short excerpts from my Dicole OZ show, recorded in Helsinki, this past December, you can grasp a little more of what I think is really essential to know to become a great and effective web publisher.
…

|
Website usability testing identifies a precise methodology devoted to uncover specific bugs, idiosyncrasies and ambiguities in the way that website design impacts the effective use, legibility, navigation, and user experience of your website. In this MasterNewMedia guide you can find the best free website usability testing tools available out there.

Heat map of MasterNewMedia homepage created with Feng-GUI
Website usability testing is indeed a critical component of any effective online publishing strategy. When properly utilized, usability testing allows you to effectively scan and rapidly identify which are the critical issues to be addressed in your web publication that can improve legibility, the time visitors spend on your website or the ability to turn offers for products and services into actual conversions.
In fact, what’s the point of having valuable content under your hood if your readers cannot easily discover it, share it and put it to effective use?
To be of immediate “use“, let me share first with you a simple set of basic tasks you can follow to start testing and reviewing the usability of your own website:
- Identify a critical goal: Likely, you have multiple goals for your website. The first step is to focus on the most critical. Is it sales? Is it traffic? Is it help people find something?
- Use Personas: Create typical users profiles to best focus on potential needs and expectations of a fictional target group. Is your website addressed to experts in the filed or to a general audience? Do you want to attract loyal readers or occasional stumblers? Which age / sex / location are your users?
- Carry on critical tasks: After identifying your goals and creating typical users profiles (Personas), you want some friends, readers or volunteers, to carry on critical tasks on your website to identify areas for improvement and weaknesses. Is the sale process straightforward? Can people download your content easily? Are your blog posts easily shareable on social media?
- Collect the data: While your users go through a set of pre-determined tasks and perform specific actions on your website, you need to closely observe and report where they hesitate, step back, or remain confused by what they see on your site. Better yet, you can use a dedicated usability tool that collects absolute or relative data that can help you characterize the behavior of your testers.
- Review your analysis: Once you gather this data, you need to group it in clear-labeled groups (i.e. navigation, layout, functional flow, error handling, etc.), so that you can easily review and analyze all of this information and then find the ideal strategy to make your improvements.
Now that you know what are the key steps needed to start a website usability test, what you really need is knowing which tools or services are available out there that you can immediately put to use to support, speed up and professionally organize those very tasks.
But how can you identify and select which is the most appropriate website usability testing tool for your specific needs, competence level and budget?
To help you get started right away, this guide provides you with a set of individual reviews, a comparative table and a comprehensive mindmap to help you select your ideal free website usability testing tool.
Please note that these free usability testing tools have a limited range of features. For example, they do not allow you to record the screen of your testers or engage them in screen-sharing sessions unlike professional usability testing solutions like TechSmith Morae, which will be covered in a separate upcoming MasterNewMedia guide.
Now that I have warned you about the limitations of these free website usability testing tools, here below are the specific selection criteria that I have used to compare these different services:
- Testing approach: a) Test the usability of your website by inviting specific users to share their feedback, b) analyze analytic and statistical data.
- Analytics: Generate automatic analytical data from each website usability testing tool to evaluate the the quality of your website design and user interface.
- Visualization of user behavior: Visualize the behavior of your visitors by analyzing where they click or look (via mouse tracking) on your website and which path they follow to carry on specific tasks.
- Usability report: Generate a comprehensive report that contains all the analytical data gathered by the usability test.
…

|
|
Create RSS Feeds – Free! RSS News Feeds For Your Website. Generate RSS Feeds from your website
|
|
RSS Feeds are created in XML. Feeds can be created using tags that are enclosed.
|
|
RSS Creation Process, How to Create RSS or Podcast. Create RSS 1. What is RSS? RSS is the XML-formatted text file for provision of information.
|
Survival Podcast .
|