KempMullaney.com

Originally posted on 3/5/2006
The opportunity is now.

As RSS gains popularity, a blogger, Matt Brett, has taken it upon himself to push for a standard icon to represent the availability of a feed. FeedIcons.com now offers several versions of the Mozilla Firefox icon for RSS. The impetus for this site was a December 14th post on an MSDN blog announcing that the Internet Explorer team was integrating the same icon in to IE 7. The following day the Outlook Team announced that they were using the icon as well in Outlook 12.

Matt’s effort is one to help a new technology, commonly used by early adopters, take root amongst the masses. Take a look and if you offer any content in RSS/XML I encourage you to use Matt’s icons. I have.

Read more about FeedIcons.com and Matt’s reasons for starting the site on his blog.

Posted by kempblog at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Originally posted on 8/2/2005
Here is a quick definition of RSS and associated terms.
MarketingStudies.net.

Posted by kempblog at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oringinally posted on 8/25/2006
On August 1, USA Today published an article on students using RSS feeds to conduct research.

"It saves me a lot of time and energy," says Ediriwickrema, an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. "I can quickly find what I'm looking for without having to go from Web site to Web site, and I get the most up-to-date information."

Apply this to the mobility aspect I commented on in regards to laptops and PDAs and the benefits grow exponentially.

Read the full USA Today article here.

Posted by kempblog at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Originally posted on 7/26/2005
My last post on RSS and Mobility focused on the Laptop. Here are a few thoughts on doing the same with a Pocket PC PDA.

To start, you will need an RSS reader or news aggregator. Check out Handango and search for 'RSS' for a good selection. For these screen shots I am using NewsBreak by Ilium Software. Selecting feeds works in one of four ways.

• Choose from a list of known channels
• Search online for channels
• Import from a file or URL (OPML), and
• Insert the channel's URL (RSS).

This is a very complete list that shows the developer understands the challenges of using PDAs (like entering text) and wanted to make adding RSS feeds as easy as possible. Once you have added your channels, the software will use your Internet connection (your PC' connection via your cradle, Wi-Fi or cellular) to look for updates to the feeds. The data is then cached and can be viewed with or without an active connection. This application puts an update for new articles on the 'Today' screen of your Pocket PC (see the screen capture to the right).

When you open the application you get a list of your feeds. The numbers to the right of the feed's title tell you how many of the articles have not been viewed. In the example, Brighthand has 13 unread articles. At the top of the page there is a folder hierarchy so that you can organize your feeds into folders. This can be customized to any grouping you choose. When you are ready to read, simply tap on any of the news sites to open their feed.

Once you are in the article view, you can tap on any feed to read more. Once you have viewed an article, the title changes from Bold to regular font. These are the same feeds you view on a laptop so the amount of content is determined by the publisher. In any case, each article does contain a hyperlink back to the full-length, online article, so if you have a connection you can read the rest of the content.

Because RSS is mostly text, the PDA experience is almost identical to the laptop experience. You can mark articles as unread to revisit them, and choose how often the software searches for updates. Obviously you will be dealing with a smaller screen but on the whole this is an easy way to check for news updates in place of using a laptop.

Posted by kempblog at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Originally posted on 7/22/2005
One of the most beneficial technologies/applications I have found in the Occasionally Connected world has been RSS and RSS readers.

RSS (really simple syndication) is a great way to distribute content. Users subscribe to a feed and then update that content as they choose. All users need is a computer and a RSS reader or news aggregator. There are plenty of free aggregators out there, but not all of them are built to cache the data for off-line use. Yahoo and Bloglines both allow you to read RSS feeds using your browser, but they do not save the content so you can view it without an Internet connection. You can find a partial list of RSS readers here. Personally, I use Net NewsWire for Apple OS X.

So how does this work? For our example, we will use Reuters. On their Website, Reuters offers a list of RSS feeds. I can pick and choose which content I want update by clicking on the "XML" button. [RSS is built on XML standards and the initials are often interchanged.] This should launch your RSS reader and prompt you to add the feed. Then you are done.

Several sites will have an RSS section that will allow you to subscribe to feeds, and most news readers offer a directory. Finding content is not difficult.

Occasionally Connected Use
Each morning before I leave the house, I start-up my laptop and my RSS reader. Using the Refresh Now button, the 55 feeds I have selected are checked for updates and downloaded in less than 30 seconds. I close my laptop and leave for work. Once on the train, I then read through each of the feeds. Different sites have adopted different strategies when it comes to what is included in a feed. Smaller sites and most Weblogs provide all of their content in the RSS feed. Larger media sites generally provide the title of each story and the first few lines of text. From the synopsis, you can navigate to their Web page to read the entire article. Though I am disconnected I can determine from the briefs whether or not I want to read the rest of the article and flag it to be read the next time I have a connection.

By the time I get to the office, I have read/scanned the sites I like to check daily for news and editorials. On a usual day this will include 150 to 200 articles. My time spent browsing from site to site each morning has been severely reduced. Now, not only am I am better informed, but I am much more efficient. I only spend time online reading the articles I selected when I get to work.

My one complaint is that I cannot find a news reader that will cache the images attached to the feeds. This is a small price to pay for making my hour commute more productive and more fun.


Click on the image above to see a larger picture of Net NewsWire.

Posted by kempblog at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)