What is RSS?
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is a manner to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, then on occasion content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines then notices for easy reading.
What problem does RSS solve?
The majority people are interested in various websites whose content changes on an random schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community then religious organization information pages, product information pages, medical websites, then weblogs. Repeatedly checking every one 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 many websites they are usually disorganized then can get overwhelming, then are often mistaken for spam.
RSS is a better manner to be notified of new then changed content. Notifications of changes to many websites are handled easily, then the results are presented to you well organized then distinct from email.
How does RSS work?
RSS works by having the website author keep 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 then organize the results for you. (RSS feeds then aggregators are then on occasion called “RSS Channels” then “RSS Readers”.)
Producing an RSS feed is very simple then hundreds of thousands of websites now provide this feature, including major news organizations like the New York Times, the BBC, then Reuters, as well as various weblogs.
What information does RSS provide?
RSS provides very basic information to do its notification. It is made up of a list of items presented in order from newest to oldest. every one item usually consists of a simple title describing the item along with a more complete description then a link to a web page with the authentic information being described. On occasion this description is the full information you want to read (such as the content of a weblog post) then on occasion 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 many websites without needing to tediously read then re-read every one of the websites yourself. They detect the additions then present them all together to you in a dense then useful manner. If the title then 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 then 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 on occasion by displaying an orange button with the letters “XML” or “RSS”. RSS feeds are then often found via a “Syndicate This” link. Text “RSS” links on occasion (there are lots of variations) point to a web page explaining the nature of the RSS feeds provided then 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 then have the aggregator monitor the feed for you. Many 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 then 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.
The majority large news websites then a good number weblogs are maintained using special “content management” programs. Authors add their stories then postings to the website by interacting with those programs then then use the program’s “publish” facility to create the HTML files that make up the website. Those programs often then can update the RSS feed XML file at the same time, adding an item referring to the new story or post, then removing less recent items. Blog creation tools like Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, then 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 keep 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 keep it. There are then services that every so often read requested websites themselves then try to instinctively determine changes (this is a good number 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?
… it is a social sites networks aggregator that looked pretty good when I saw the demo … Twitter real time search, the official RSS feed from the event, …
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rss reader or aggregator How do I add an rss feed to my website? Please note that I am not looking for an aggregator, a reader or a means to display my rss …
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I now use SEnuke to submit my unique articles to high-traffic web 2.0 sites, bookmarking and notify RSS by using the RSS Aggregator Nuke and Social Bookmark Nuke features. What normally take hours can now be accomplished in just a …
Webmaster Blog – http://www.info-zone.eu/
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Simple online RSS service. Create RSS feeds and display RSS feeds on your website for FREE, Track RSS feeds, Import Existing RSS feeds and much much more!
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How to Create an RSS Feed With Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer. By Stephen Downes July 29, 2003. The ultimate low-tech guide to creating your own RSS feed.
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Create RSS feeds. RSS news feeds are now being used as marketing tools.
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Dallas Marketing .
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