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RSS, Blogs and WikisSLAIG - Surrey Library and Information Group
20th February 2007
Karen Blakeman
RBA Information Services, UK
UKeiG Committee Member
19 April 2023 1Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk
RSS vs Blogs vs Wikis
RSS – a means of delivering information to the user
Blogs and wikis– means of publishing information– both are content management systems– can be quick and easy to use– can also be used as collaborative tools within organisations
and outside of the organisation– both can automatically generate RSS feeds
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What is RSS?
Stands for Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary or RDF site summary– depends on version
• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.9x)• RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.x)
– also Google’s ATOM– written in XML
• extensible markup language– look for the orange logos
A means of delivering headlines, alerts, tables of contents
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Why isn’t RSS more popular?
Need a feed reader to read them and get the most out of the technology
Web based readers
or Programs on your desktop machine, laptop,
Blackberry, mobile Will all change:
– RSS reader incorporated into IE 7 and Outlook 2007
– soon rolling out onto people’s desktops
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Raw RSS feed
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Feeds in Omea
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http://www.google.com/reader
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Feeds in Outlook 2007
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Who does RSS?
Lots of people– Companies and organisations, for example CILIP, UKeiG
• for delivering news of training and events, headlines and abstracts of newsletter articles, blog headlines, discussions in web based communities of practice
– many news services now offer RSS feeds
• Yahoo News, Google News, Moreover
• BBC, newspapers, magazines, Factiva
– professional, scientific, trade press
• BMJ, New Scientist, Information World Review etc.
– Individuals, companies
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RSS vs email alerts and newsletters
Bypasses the spam filters
Reduces the overload in your inbox– separate email alerts, headlines etc from urgent email
Quicker and easier to scan individual headlines within an alert and decide what is relevant
Can set up filters to pick up stories that mention specific products, companies etc. as the feeds come in
All your alerts are in one place– can read them source by source, altogether, by date and
time, whatever!
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RSS vs email alerts and newsletters (2)
You control when you receive and read the feeds– look at your feeds when you want to– set up default update frequency for all your feeds– can change frequency of update and alerting for individual
feeds• not always available in web based readers
Easier to “unsubscribe”– just hit delete!
Easy to select and forward interesting, individual stories to users, colleagues, clients
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Adding a feed to your reader
Spotted an interesting RSS feed?– Click on the RSS, XML, Atom or feed logo
• sometimes the URL of the feed is displayed in the text of the page
– Copy the URL of the feed page – Paste into the Add or Subscribe box of your reader
• there may be additional options you can select
OR– Depending on your feed reader, there may be buttons, right
click options, browser plug-ins that will directly ‘subscribe’ you
That's it!
Want to change feed readers?
No problem Export your list of feeds to an OPML file
(Outline Processor Markup Language) Import the OPML file into your new feed reader
– Note: will not import program specific filters or rules
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RSS readers
RSS Compendium– http://allrss.com/
Web based readers– access from any terminal or PC– options and functions not as comprehensive as most PC
programs– Newsgator.com, Bloglines.com, www.google.com/reader/
Desktop programs– plugins for Outlook e.g. Newsgator– standalone programs e.g. Omea, Feed Demon– Outlook 2007 and IE 7 have RSS capability built in
Newsgator suite of programs can synchronize between web account and desktop reader
Add feeds to your web page
Incorporate feeds in your web pages using javascript, php, asp etc. Third part services e,g, RapidFeeds, Feed2js.org
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BBC news feeds on your site
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm
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Disadvantages of RSS
At present, have to make the effort to set up a web based reader or download and install a program– will change when IE7 and MS Office 2007 start to become
more widely adopted
Not all publishers provide RSS feeds as well as email alerts
It is seriously addictive!!
“Sorry, have to go – got to squeeze 5 minutes work in between feed updates”
Blogs
What is a blog?– short for weblog– content management system with attitude!– publishes information chronologically– content can range from self-indulgent drivel to extreme
erudition
– easy to use and publish from anywhere, hence the high
proportion of utter rubbish in the blogosphere
“Vodcasts and blogs are to the noughties what graffiti was to the
Seventies: mindless scrawls reading: 'I woz ere.' It says: 'I'm a
moron, but worship me anyway.”
The Observer, 3rd December 2006
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1962820,00.html
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Blogs (2)
Blogs by industry gurus are a good way of keeping up
to date with what is happening in a sector
Good way of disseminating information on new
services, product launches and new developments– can use the comments option to encourage feedback
Internal blogs to document project progress Can even be used to generate web sites
– http://www.newsbriefsoman.info/
Most automatically generate RSS feeds
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Anatomy of a blog (1)
Most recent posting at
the top
Option for comments
Tags or index terms
Author profile
Hosted on a web site with its own domain name
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Anatomy of a blog (2)
Links to related sites and feeds
Blogroll of related blogs
Links to archives
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UKeiG collaborative blog
English Cut
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Do you know you are looking at a blog?
Corporate blogging
Makovsky 2006 State of Corporate Blogging Survey– http://www.makovsky.com/mak/corporatebloggingsurvey/Makovs
ky2006StateOfCorporateBloggingSurvey.pdf
– surveyed 150 business leaders from Fortune 1000 companies– 20% monitor blogs to find out what is being said about their
company– 21% read blogs about their sector at least once a week
Jupiter Research – 34% of large companies already blogging, and another 35% plan
to– http://tinyurl.com/ryo2p
Product/company reputation– The “Kryptonite Affair”
• http://tinyurl.com/9p93l
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Blogpulse Trends
Where are the blogging UK librarians?
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/where-are-the-blogging-uk-librarians – University of Glamorgan, LRC Blog
• http://lrc.weblog.glam.ac.uk/ – Shush! – the Information Services Library blog
• http://library.northampton.ac.uk/blog/index.php– Univ of Bath Library Science News
• http://bathsciencenews.blogspot.com/– ILS Matters
• http://www2.worc.ac.uk/wordpress/– E-Resources News and Trials (University of Liverpool)
• http://liveresources.blogspot.com/– Libraries in the NHS
• http://nelh.blogspot.com/ – Talking Knowledge Management
• http://talkingkm.blogspot.com/ 19 April 2023 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 29
More blogging UK librarians
Info Junkie– http://swashford.blogspot.com/
Swansea Libraries – http://swansealibraries.bogspot.com/n
Hampshire and Isle of Wight – http://hiow.blogspot.com/
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Setting up your own blog
Host on the blogging service’s own server or install on your site Wordpress
– Host on http://www.wordpress.com/
– Software for loading onto your own site at http://www.wordpress.org/
– Free
Blogger– http://www.blogger.com/
– owned by Google
– Host on Blogger or publish to your own site
– free
Typepad – Host on http://www.typepad.com/
– Priced
Also Movable Type, Live Journal at http://www.sixapart.com/
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Tracking down blogs and RSS
Look for the Blogroll on a relevant blog Google Blogsearch
– http://www.google.com/blogsearch Ask.co.uk – Blogs and feeds Windows Live (live.com) – Feeds
– also site: + feed: command
– site:bbc.co.uk feed:bbc.co.uk Yahoo Advanced Search & file format RSS/XML Exalead - limit search to RSS feeds Blog and feed search engines
– Technorati, Blogpulse
– See also the blog search tool list on http://www.crossengine.com/
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Wikis
wiki-wiki – Hawaiian meaning quick A collaborative web application that allows users to easily add
and edit content Can be used for
– developing documentation
– project management
• History keeps a record of the changes and different versions of the documents
Encourages collaboration Many have blog like discussion areas and RSS feeds Most famous example is Wikipedia Standardised format and layout
“Makes our contributors concentrate on content rather than wasting time on pretty layouts”
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Wikis (2)
Default in most wiki software lets anyone create and edit a page– need to protect Admin functions and limit creation, edit and access rights
– can ‘lock’ individual pages or sections
– can require registration to set up new pages or edit existing ones
– Internet encyclopaedias go head to head
• www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.htm
– Fatally Flawed
• corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf
– IBM history flow
• www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/index.htm
Not always straightforward to install on your system– use third party “wiki farms” to start with
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_farms
Reluctant contributors
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Wikipedia
Option to edit the page
Wikipedia (2)
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No edit option
Wikipedia - history
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Date of edits Author/editor
www.alacrawiki.com
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What next?
Have a go yourself– RSS
• Try Newsgator, Bloglines, Google Reader, IE 7, Omea etc.
– Blogs• Set up one yourself• Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/) – not ideal but great to
start with and experiment• WordPress and host it on wordpress.com
– Wikis• Wary of setting one up yourself? Even on a wiki farm?• Come and play on the UKeiG Dog’s Breakfast page
– http://ukeig.xwiki.com/
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ukeig.xwiki.com – Dog’s Breakfast