What is RSS?
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is a approach to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, in addition to every now and then content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines in addition to notices for easy reading.
What problem does RSS solve?
Nearly all people are interested in a lot of websites whose content changes on an irregular schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community in addition to religious organization information pages, product information pages, medical websites, in addition to weblogs. Repeatedly checking each 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 multiple websites they are usually disorganized in addition to can get overwhelming, in addition to are often mistaken for spam.
RSS is a better approach to be notified of new in addition to changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, in addition to the results are presented to you well organized in addition to distinct from email.
How does RSS work?
RSS works by having the website author continue 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 in addition to organize the results for you. (RSS feeds in addition to aggregators are in addition to every now and then called “RSS Channels” in addition to “RSS Readers”.)
Producing an RSS feed is very simple in addition to hundreds of thousands of websites now provide this feature, including major news organizations like the New York Times, the BBC, in addition to Reuters, as well as a lot of weblogs.
What information does RSS provide?
RSS provides very necessary information to do its notification. It is made up of a list of items presented in order from newest to oldest. each one item usually consists of a simple title describing the item along with a more complete description in addition to a link to a web page with the actual information being described. Sometimes this description is the full information you want to read (such as the content of a weblog post) in addition to every now and then 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 multiple websites without needing to tediously read in addition to re-read each one of the websites yourself. They detect the additions in addition to present them all together to you in a dense in addition to useful manner. If the title in addition to 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 in addition to 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 every now and then by displaying an orange button with the letters “XML” or “RSS”. RSS feeds are in addition to often found via a “Syndicate This” link. Text “RSS” links every now and then (there are lots of variations) point to a web page explaining the nature of the RSS feeds provided in addition to 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 in addition to have the aggregator monitor the feed for you. Various 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 in addition to 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.
Nearly all large news websites in addition to nearly all weblogs are maintained using special “content management” programs. Authors add their stories in addition to postings to the website by interacting with those programs in addition to in addition to use the program’s “publish” facility to create the HTML files that make up the website. Those programs often in addition to can update the RSS feed XML file at the same time, adding an item referring to the new story or post, in addition to removing less recent items. Blog creation tools like Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, in addition to 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 continue 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 continue it. There are in addition to services that once in a while read requested websites themselves in addition to 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?
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As part of the course delegates will learn how to use an RSS aggregator, the power of real time search engines, use their own Twitter account and start social bookmarking effectively. I consider this article to be deliberately …
Leica's Infrequent Penses – http://leica.snot.me.uk/
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Give them what they want. RSS feedshould be created and submitted to as many RSS aggregators as possible.But make certain the RSS feeds have focused keyword within the submit title. Thefeed may also be named as the target keyword. …
Bookmarkindo Blog – http://bookmarkindo.com/blog/
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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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My Quick Avatar .
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