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Really Simple Syndication

Are you ready to get nerdy? Yes? Good. There's an important technology that is part of the fabric of new media and social technologies and it's called RSS. It's a standard way of sharing content (e.g., a blog post or posts; a stream of photos posted from a cell phone, a series of podcasts, etc.) from a single source out to any number of recipients (e.g., your computer, an iPod, a smart phone, another website, etc.). Understanding even a little bit about RSS can be a dangerous thing, so let's break out the safety scissors.

Learn about what makes RSS tick and how to use free services to collect data on content distributed via an RSS feed.

Analyze the RSS feed of your favorite website and prepare at least one observation about its use of RSS (e.g., some sites only publish a teaser in their RSS feed instead of the full post).

Use feedburner.com to "burn" the RSS feed of your blog and your podcast if you choose*

Replace your blog feed and podcast feed with your new "burned" feeds*

*If you have already done this per the requirements of other exercises, then review your feedburner analytics/insights reports for your feeds and provide me with 1. the direct links to your burned feed and 2. one insight from your data, per feed (this should equal 2 - 3 in total: blog, podcast, video feed)

Optional: create an aggregate feed using Yahoo! Pipes

Navigate to your favorite site, look for the RSS icon, click on it, then on the page it goes to, find the "View Source" option for your web browser. For example, in Firefox, it's View > Page Source. Take a look at the various elements and see what you notice.

Login to feedburner.com (you'll need to create a Google account if you don't already have one) and walk through the instructions for burning your blog and podcast feeds.

There are also instructions on feedburner.com for integrating your "burned" feed into your blog. You'll know you've done this correctly when you click on your blog's RSS icon and it takes you to a feedburner page.

Yahoo! Pipes is a cool service that allows you to take any number of RSS feeds and make a new feed from them. It can be used for merging your YouTube feed with a podcast feed, or for integrating a Google News search feed into your blog's RSS feed. It's only limited by your imagination and ability to climb the learning curve of the software.

50 points possible

Up to 10 points for each requirement

Points off for cutting corners or other evidence of a lackluster effort.

Creativity is welcome and encouraged

1. Submit your work using the following form:
    
2. Post a response to this exercise with a link your blog post summarizing what you did to meet each requirement.
3. I will be clicking on the RSS feeds for your blog and podcast and expect to be taken to a feedburner.com page. If this does not happen then there is no partial credit for this requirement.
4. Rate this exercise and explain your rating with comments about specific strengths/ improvement ideas. Anonymous posts are perfectly acceptable, just log out of the site first.
5. UIUC Students: Tag the link “ADV400E9” on delicious.com
6. SU Students: Tag the link "IST400E9" on delicious.com

RSS Resources on ShiftLearning.com | helpful links to better understand RSS

RSS on Delicious | a massive list of websites that allow you to manipulate or explore RSS feeds

RSS on wikipedia | the wikipedia entry for RSS

Yahoo! Pipes | a free service for manipulating and creating custom RSS feeds