Internet News

Pushing out content

Fun With PubSubHubbub, WordPress & Faster Indexation [Real Time Search & Data Distribution], SEO Gadgets (Jun 16)

PubSubhubbub helps in getting your content out to readers quickly. Don't wait for the search engine crawl. Instead push to subscribers.

"With PubSubHubbub, the hub efficiently fetches the published feed content and multicasts the new/changed content out to all of the registered subscribers, making your site do a lot less work in terms of serving a URL."

Primer to Google Reader

Google Reader 101: Getting Started With RSS by Rick Broida, PCWorld (Apr 20)

Google Reader is the leading web-based newsreader service for RSS and Atom feeds. Rick Broida shows "how to set up Google's free newsreader service, add RSS feeds, decorate it with favicons, and use it offline."

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Google Reader and Multimedia Tags

Google Reader Adds Support for Video and Audio Tags, Google Blog (Apr 23)

"Google's feed reader started to support the video and audio tags from feeds. The only popular browser that doesn't support the two tags is Internet Explorer, but that doesn't mean that you'll be able to play videos without plug-ins in all the other browsers."

Google Reader for RSS

Google Reader 101: Getting Started With RSS,
Rick Broida, PCWorld (Apr 20)

If you have never set up RSS feeds for yourself to stay up to date with news items and favourite blogs, this article explains the basics and shows how to use Google Reader. It's free and easy, and you set it up to read posts offline.

Play at Google Reader

Google tries to make its RSS reader fun, too, Stephen Shankland, Webware (Mar 11)

Next time you fire up your Google Reader, it will ask you if you want to play. Use this article to help you decide.

Feedly - A Surprise

Feedly turned up as a mini-toolbar in my Firefox 3.6 today. I suppose I had installed it and forgotten about it. What an intriguing tool!

Feedly works with Google Reader to present sites and feeds on a freshly designed page that is quite colourful and more like a magazine. Feedly titles it "My Digest". It's more interesting than Google Reader's display. It's a reminder, however, of the importance of keeping Google Reader honed to following the sites that are truly important to one - otherwise this will become a time sink.

A mini-toolbar will show in the bottom corner of the browser (Firefox or Chrome) for a web page or search results page. This makes it easy to quickly add a page to feedly/Google Reader or share a discovery through other social media. You're never more than a click away from Twitter or Facebook.

Feedly can be trained to show you what you most want. In Optimizing your feedly experience, Feedly has some instructions:

"Feedly collects the unread articles from the sites you subscribe to, filters the best ones and displays them in the cover and digest page. The filtering is a combination of freshness, how many times it has been shared by feedly/Google Reader users, the time of the day you are accessing your feedly and your personal reading/recommendation pattern. The best ways to influence the filtering are …1) to go to the organize sources page (aka dashboard) and marking the sources you like the best as favorites by clicking on the star next to the source name and …2) to recommend individual articles you find interesting. The more you use feedly, the better the recommendations."

FeedDemon for RSS

FeedDemon update takes cues from Google, by Seth Rosenblatt, Download Blog (Jan 26)

New version of Feed Demon 3.1 adds features and makes this RSS reader competitive with Google Reader.

"The two biggest new features include on-the-fly item translation via a translate button on the individual item toolbar. If the item is in a feed that you synchronize with Google Reader, the translation will occur in-line. If the feed isn't synced, then FeedDemon will open up a Reader page. There's also a new content filter that lets users create filters to automatically certain kinds of incoming items as read. For people who subscribe to tens or hundreds of feeds, this can potentially be a major time-saver."

Where do RSS Feeds fit?

RSS: A Stalled Standard, But "Not Dead Yet"? by Andrew Goodman, Traffick.com (Aug 7)

RSS feeds and readers aren't quite mainstream. People still use email, and of course the newcomers Twitter, Techmeme, Digg, Sphinn, Facebook.

"Still, the fact that the top sites in the search marketing industry "only" have around 40,000 RSS subscribers despite their large numbers of daily articles and channels, shows that RSS subscription reaches its limits a lot sooner than email used to back in the day."

Goodman was responding to 26 Top Search Marketing Blogs By RSS Subscribers at the Online Marketing Blog. Posting lists the top 25 and some others.

Create RSS Feed for Google News Search

Why did Google Make this Harder by David Warlick, 2 Cents Worth (July 16)

Google removed its RSS subscribe link from its news search. Have to manually create the url by adding &output=rss.

Newsgator Reader Closing

Newsgator goes all in with Google Reader by Seth Rosenblatt, Download Blog (July 30)

Newsgator is shutting down its RSS readers and swithcing to Google Reader. August 31 is the end date.

"Along with Google Reader synchronization for FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, and the NetNewsWire iPhone app, Newsgator will discontinue Newsgator Online, Newsgator Go!, Newsgator Inbox, the Newsgator browser toolbar, and the desktop notifier. Several features in the desktop apps that depended on the proprietary syncing service will also cease to function at the end of August. If you use the blogroll, ratings or headlines features, Newsgator recommends removing them from any Web site they're used on by August 31. The shared clipping feature will transition into Google Reader's analogous feature."

Alltop for Topics

Webware Radar: Alltop launches personal pages by Don Reisinger, Webware (Mar 17)

Here's a reminder that Alltop is a great all-in-one-place to see RSS feeds. Now it has a MyAlltop for creating a custom page - "The widgets can be viewed on that single page and shared with others. In order to create a MyAlltop page, visitors will be required to register for the site. Once they do, they can click an icon next to the feed to add it to their page."

The Canada page as an example gives a cross-country view that would be hard to build on your own.

One regret - although the pages on topics are excellent, there are no topics to cover environment - no environment, climate change, or green.

Ensembli - different kind of RSS reader

Ensembli demos simple, useful RSS aggregator by Rafe Needleman, Webware (Mar 2)

Ensembli is a new RSS reader - tracks the topics you tell it you're interested in. "It then watches what you c lick on and fetches stories based both on those implied interests and what you've said you want to see. ... It's really simple, and I believe it could be a useful site for a person who's just looking to see what's new in a field they care a bit about. "

How-to Videos on Google Reader

Google Reader gets how-to video guides, by Josh Lowensohn, Webware (Jan 9)

Google Reader has released the two videos to show how to add and read feeds and use the tool's sharing features.

Lowensohn noted - "Google's efforts are notably overshadowed by YouTube users who have taken it upon themselves to create screencasts similar to the ones made for last year's YouTube help video challenge. How-to site ExpertVillage in particular has 16 different clips, while Web guru Ed Dale has put together a three-part, half-hour series about how to use it. "

Four RSS Aggregators

Which RSS Reader Is Right for You?, by Becky Krystal, Washington Post (Dec 21)

As this article points out, the subscription possibilities through RSS are endless - news, blogs, video, and audio. Four aggregators are reviewed:

+ Bloglines - new design
+ Google Reader - will analyze what you read
+ My Yahoo or through Yahoo Mail - but speaking from experience - can't fit a lot into My Yahoo, unlike Google Reader. Definitely for lite use
+ Netvibes - very easy to personalize

RSS at Library and Archives Canada

RSS Feeds from Library and Archives Canada - LAC's RSS page has information on finding RSS reader best suited for you. After you have that sorted out, subscribe to LAC's What's New.

FindLaw's RSS Feeds

FindLaw’s New Case Summaries Through RSS Feeds by Carol Ebbinghouse, Newsbreaks (Oct 13)

"Last week FindLaw announced "up-to-the-minute" court opinions and case summaries available through RSS feeds. The summaries are written by attorney-editors at the Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters of FindLaw, tagged by jurisdiction and law topic, and then fed into an RSS (really simple syndication) feed that automatically sends updates to subscribers."

Bloglines Update

Bloglines adds advertising, launches new look By Caroline McCarthy, Webware (Aug 11)

"RSS reader start-up Bloglines has rolled out the first step of an extensive redesign, launching a new "skin" to its beta testers and starting to work advertising into members' feed readers."

AideRSS for ranking RSS feeds

AideRSS ranks and sorts your RSS feeds By Josh Lowensohn. Webware (Jul 17)

There are tools to manage large collections of RSS feeds. This article points to a couple of features at Google Reader, but for more power, AideRSS is recommended. It can be added to Google Reader as a plugin.

"Enter AidRSS, a ridiculously simple story sorter that uses PostRank, a rating system that measures how good a post is by factors like the number of user comments, traffic, and promotion on social news tools. All of this statistical analysis is applied to each story, giving it a score from 1 to 10."

Has video on how it works.

Guide to RSS

RSS Feeds: Managing the Mechanism by Martin Belam, FUMSI (Mar)

Runs through the options for collecting and reading RSS feeds. Has several tips on managing the load.

"The great promise of RSS feeds was that they would save us from information overload. However, when subscribing to more feeds every day is just a click away, we can all too easily become swamped by the very mechanism that was meant to help us."

RSS Readers

The definitive top 5 online RSS readers Pandia (Jan 7)

Reviews last year's winners, introduces new rss readers, and sticks with the 2007 list. Probably best to pick from the top four: NewsGator (online version), Bloglines beta, Google Reader, and FeedShow.

Google stops indexing rss feeds

Google Removes RSS Feeds From Search Results by Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land (Dec 19)

Good - "Google will no longer include RSS feed results in their search results with the exception of podcast feeds." The feeds usually duplicate what is on the page.

World RSS Feeds

Resources of the Week: Global RSS Feeds By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor, ResourceShelf (AUg 16)

Awesome collection of international rss feeds with news from governments and organizations from around the world.

Why use RSS

10 Reasons Why RSS Beats Email, Clickfire (Aug)

All good reasons. Why then is reviewing the feeds I subscribe to (apart from those in the Yahoo Widget for Headline News) such a pain?

Google Reader Feature

Cure Information Overload Using Google Reader, Google Operating System (Aug 9)

With Google Reader you can sort feeds by relevance as determined by Google's analysis of your reading patterns.

Managing RSS

"RSS Update: It's RSS, Jim, but Not as We Know It", By Roddy MacLeod, Freepint (July 25)

MacLeod provides an update on how RSS is being used - it's more than following blogs - and information about tools for reading and managing the feeds. Management is surely the key issue today. mySyndicat is mentioned as a "feed mixer" tool that will create feed digests.

Getting Started with River of News Feeds: mySyndicaat, RSS Tool Vendors (Dec 12, 2006)

5 RSS Readers

Top 5 online RSS readers, Pandia Search (Feb 23)

Susanne Koch at Pandia tells us what she looks for in a RSS reader and then names 5. Maybe I'll change from the Snap add-on for Firefox.

Getting RSS

Syndication, really simply by Mathew Ingram, Ingram 2.0 (Feb 20)

Explains RSS feeds and how to get them. Mentions the new news reading capabilities of IE7 and Firefox, the aggregators, and some readers.

Also A blog for every occasion (Feb 5)

Working with Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo Ruins My Life with Yahoo Pipes, Researchbuzz (Feb 12)

Tara Calishain tries her hand at using Yahoo's Pipes and makes it a bit easier for the rest of us.

Examples of Pipes

5 cool ways to use Yahoo! Pipes, franticindustries (Feb 12)

Want some ideas on how to use Yahoo's new Pipes for mashing RSS feeds? Here they are. One of these is the Travel Fanatic - "It combines Flickr images, Yahoo Answers, and Yahoo News related to the location. ". Nice idea, but that one is stuck in London.

Do Your Own RSS Mashup

Yahoo Tests RSS Mashup Creator for the Masses Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service via PC World (Feb 8)

"Yahoo Inc. has launched a service called Pipes designed to let regular users mix different RSS and Atom feeds and create data "mashups," a process that so far has required programming knowledge."

IE7 Boost to RSS

NewsGator Technologies: Microsoft's Launch of Vista Opens Door for Increased Adoption of RSS Technology Marketwire via Marketwatch (Jan 29)

"RSS Built Into Browsers Will Drive Paradigm Shift of How Online Content Is Delivered and Consumed, According to NewsGator Founder"

"Reinacker [NewsGator founder Greg Reinacker] continued: "The release of Vista and IE 7 will result in a rise in popularity of RSS and the fact that every desktop will now have a reader on it will tend to drive the increase in RSS feeds generated from enterprise systems. As that happens, IT departments will increasingly need to efficiently manage RSS in their organization, centrally administer subscription content and control bandwidth allocation and usage throughout the enterprise.""

Using OPML

Gear Up Your Research Guides with the Emerging OPML Codes by Kimberley Wilcox, Computers in Libraries (Dec 2006)

"What if you could create a dynamic research guide that displays the latest headlines from selected blogs, feeds of new book and article titles from the library’s catalog and databases, and audio and video files—along with your traditional Web links and bibliographies? Even better, what if this guide could be syndicated so that people were able to subscribe to it and automatically receive updated versions in their RSS aggregators?"

Answer: use Outline Processor Mark­up Language (OPML)

"In this article, I’ll discuss the strengths and limitations of the OPML format, explain how it can help you create and share dynamic outlines, and walk you through the creation of your first OPML file. Don’t worry; it’s easier than you think to get geared up!"

RSS Readers

Make your own headlines - "These easy tools can deliver the best news to your desktop without the fluff--no matter how you define fluff." By Elsa Wenzel. CNet (October 13, 2006)

"Make your own headlines. These easy tools can deliver the best news to your desktop without the fluff--no matter how you define fluff."

RSS Newsreaders: Bloglines, Google Reader, Feed Demon, Newsgator, Rojo.

RSS Mystifying

RSS: Use, Lose, or Abuse? By Michelle Manafy, EContent (Oct 2006)

"Simply put, really simple syndication isn't simple at all. While ease of use on the consumer side—one-click subscription—is improving through aggregators like syndic8 or NewsGator, finding and using RSS feeds continues to mystify most readers."

Article doesn't help to demystify.

How to introduce RSS

Reflections on Web Search University, ResearchBuzz (Sept 20)

Of interest - how to introduce RSS to co-workers -- "I think what I would recommend is showing people individual RSS feeds using a tool like Grazr to highlight the kind of content available. From there, create a list of feeds relevant to your company or institution and show some of the content available. If c/p/c’s show some interest, offer to set them up with a really basic reader like the one available from My Yahoo, or use a tool like RSSFwd to show them how they can get updates by e-mail."

Newsreader for the Mac

Scout Report recommended Shrook 2.5, a newsreader for Macintosh users that will pick up podcasts and download to iTunes.

Publishers use RSS

Industry considers RSS by David Mort, IRN Research (Dec 2005/Jan 2006)

""The initial attraction of RSS to scientific publishers and databases was that it could be used as an alerting service, typically offering new tables of contents as they were published. This is still the main function of many RSS feeds, but some publishers are now developing RSS feeds for a range of other news services such as jobs, product data, events and public announcements."

Kebberfegg RSS Finder

Do You Kebberfegg?, by Mary Ellen Bates, SearchDay (May 4)

Picking up RSS feeds can be a good way to stay abreast with changes. Mary Ellen Bates recommends Kebberfegg as a tool for finding feeds that pertain to your interest.

"But another, really cool, option for finding RSS feeds is a tool called Kebberfegg, developed by web search maven Tara Calishain. Yes, it's kind of a strange name—a pronounceable version of Keyword-Based RSS Feed Generator. Instead of trying to remember where the best RSS feed search tools are and how to use them, Kebberfegg builds RSS feeds around the specific information you're looking and in the types of sources you would probably find most useful."

Web Buzz at Popurls

Lots of Popular on One Page - ResearchBuzz found Popurls where the most popular urls from a variety of sites are mashed together. Sites include the social bookmarking sites like Furl and del.icio.us, some news sources, and photo-sharing sources. Be sure to heed Tara Calishain's advice to change the display to black on white.

RSS Feed Readers

Feed Readers Reviewed, Lee Odden of Business Blog Consulting (Apr 3) - There are dozens of newsreaders on the web that one can use to pick up RSS news feeds. This entry links to a review of several online feed readers in TechCrunch. It has a very nice comparison chart.

RSS Overload

Filter Your RSS Feeds, Traffick.com (Mar 24) - Use FeedRinse to control information overload from RSS feeds.

Squeet for RSS via Email

Don't want to use a RSS newsreader? Get those feeds in email with Squeet. It's free and at the moment it does not have advertising.

New RSS Users Ignore the Orange Button

50 Million US & UK RSS Users Do Not Know They Use RSS -- How to Reach Them, in Marketing Sherpa (Feb 20) -- There could be 75 million business people using RSS in the US and the UK but only 17 to 32% know what RSS is. Seems that these people are likely ignoring the XML orange button and using MyYahoo and MyMSN buttons. For these new users - "No matter which, it's the newsiness of the content that makes RSS compelling to them, not the whiz-bang coolness of RSS itself." Article has further advice on exploiting this for marketing purposes.

Newsplorer Newsreader

Newsplorer is a new newsreader for RSS and Atom feeds from a Toronto-based company. This is one where you can play with the skins to make it look pretty on your desktop. It groups feeds by category and can do so for an unlimited number of them. Strictly for Windows computers.

Google Blog TagCloud

Google Blogs Everywhere! ResearchBuzz (Nov 1) Lists 9 blogs done by Google about its activities. Calishain put them into a tag cloud to see what was going on.

TagCloud is way to read several RSS feeds to identify the topics getting most attention (prevalence of keywords". Not surprisingly Google is the big keyword from these blogs, but also "hard to find books" and "publishers.

Students thrive on rss

RSS feeds college students' diet for research By Anh Ly, Gannett News Service (Aug 1, 2005) - how students use RSS to do their research and keep abrest. Mentions Pluck and Onfolio. Makes reading RSS feeds sound easier and more productive that it actually is.

Practices of a blog reader

For the Vox Populi: A Comparison of How Some Blog Aggregation and RSS Search Tools Work by Mary Hodder, Napsterization (July 24)

"I'm going to do this as a six part series, the first of which is below, on how services track links to blogs. The second will be on key word search, the third will cover subscription search (watchlist) performance, the fourth will look at special services and the fifth will look at spam and controls for it. The sixth will summarize and make recommendations about how to best use the services. I picked the five services I look at every day: Technorati, Feedster, Bloglines, Blogpulse and Pubsub, and so I'm familiar with them over time. I see watchlists or alerts via RSS feeds from all but Bloglines, of both URL and keyword searches, many of which are duplicate searches that allow me to also track how the services do with their searches. Note that I'm not reviewing Bloglines as a newsreader, partly because I use Netnewswire for the most part, with Bloglines as one of my backup readers, and partly because there is no comparison to the other services because they are not news readers at all."

For the Vox Populi, Part II: A Comparison of How Some Blog Aggregation and RSS Search Tools Work for Keyword Search

Interesting outline but doesn't look like parts 3 to 6 were ever written.

RSS Feed Generator

Kebberfegg -- Keyword-Based RSS Feed Generator - new tool from ResearchBuzz for creating up to 36 keyword-based RSS feeds in one shot . You can choose for several types of sources - news, press releases, blogs. Kebberfegg creates the query at the various sources and you select which ones you want to add to your newsreader. Options through the html page are to add the feed to MyYahoo, Bloglines, use MultiRSS to select a reader, or get the XML url. Neat tool but will take time to create and test good queries.

Google Feed Reader

New Google Reader For Feed Reading by Chris Sherman, SEW Blog ( Oct 7 ) - "Google Reader is a browser-based application that works with virtually all popular browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms."

Tara Calishain wasn't especially impressed with the reader saying it felt a "little detached", not like the community feeling in Bloglines. Could be good for people who use Blogger and GMail - otherwise stick with Bloglines or Newsgator or other heavy-duty services. Google Reader for RSS Feeds ResearchBuzz (Oct 11)

RSS Primer

Get the Latest Web News Delivered to Your Desktop "With RSS feeds, you can have articles from the Web come to you." by Scott Spanbauer --
From the November 2005 issue of PC World magazine - describes how to use IE and Firefox browsers for picking up RSS feeds and also names five RSS readers for more industry-strength reading.

RSS Users

More Use RSS Than Have Heard Of It by Enid Burns, ClickZ Stats (Oct 11)

"A new white paper produced by Ipsos Insight for Yahoo! finds as many as 27 percent consume content via RSS through personalized start pages such as My Yahoo! and My MSN."

"Among RSS-aware users, world news and national news tie for the most accessed content at 52 percent. Entertainment (34 percent); science and tech news (32 percent); weather (31 percent); and local news (31 percent) garner significant interest. "

Also, Study: RSS Still Not Widely Adopted by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Oct 12)

Of interest:

"Why do people like RSS? Ease of use and choice of content are top reasons. Another surprising finding was that just 7% of users liked RSS for its instant updating capability, a core benefit of the technology.

Other stats shed light on how much RSS content is being consumed. Among RSS users, the average number of feeds people subscribed to is 6.6, and on average people spent 4.1 hours per week reading feeds."

RocketInfo - RSS Search Company

RSS Offerings New Focus of Rocketinfo Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Oct 12)

"Rocketinfo Inc. (RKTI), announces a major strategic policy shift, and will immediately begin focusing its energies on its proprietary RSS technology, numerous RSS assets and exhaustive collection of RSS news feeds."

Rocketinfo offers a free RSS news reader.

PubSub LinkRanks

PubSub’s LinkRanks Measures Blog, RSS Feed Movement, Popularity EContent (Sep 27)

"PubSub.com, a prospective search tool for tracking what people are saying about topics, has announced the formal release of PubSub LinkRanks, a tool for tracking the popularity and influence of blogs and Web sites"

PR Newswire RSS Feeds

PR Newswire Launches Hundreds of Categorized RSS Feeds PR Newswire via CBS Marketwatch (Sep 22) - PR Newswire offers 125 new RSS news feeds by subject, region, and industry.

""PR Newswire was the first major commercial newswire to create RSS feeds," said Armon. "Today we have significantly increased the value of these feeds by making them available in hundreds of categories -from auto to policy, earnings to IPOs and even podcasts - and providing them in multiple languages. Visitors to our Web sites can combine our RSS feeds with their own RSS readers' settings to create even more personalized news. This is one more reason customers can be confident that we deliver their content in the formats the media and their other audiences desire, giving their news a greater chance of pickup and usage.""

Feeds are listed at http://www.prnewswire.com/rss/

New RSS Reader

Active Web Reader tracks RSS feeds and tracks bookmarks. Requires Windows and IE 6. Was reviewed in the Scout Report. More about the software at http://www.deskshare.com/awr.aspx.

Google Blog Search

Google has launched a new search engine for searching RSS feeds. Google calls it Google Blog Search but according to reports in SearchDay it is only indexing the feeds generated from weblogs and some other sources excluding news sources.

Google Blog Search (http://google.com/blogsearch) has a simple interface. Results are individual blog postings and are sorted by relevance. Order can be changed to date (likely more useful). Advanced blog search supports searches in the subject line of the posting, blog title, and blog author. For example, you could find all posts by Gwen with Search in the posting title. This is fine until I change my posting name. Tara Calishain at ResearchBuzz now signs with RBuzz but used to use tara.

Reminder - Google Blog Search picks up only the feeds that are created which may not have the full content of the posting. To have your blog included, be sure to ping the major aggregators like Technorati or Weblogs.com.

Google Launches Industrial Strength Blog Search by Chris Sherman, SearchDay (Sept 14) - has more tips on using link: to find out who's linking to a post or blog, and on setting up alerts. Predicts that other search engines will be doing blog / rss specialized searches soon too.

Google Launches a Blog Search ResearchBuzz (Sept 14) offers a detailed description of search options including syntax supported. Calishain found a lot of blogspam in the results - something Google will have to address as others have.

About Google Blog Search - Google's faq.

Paper on RSS in the Enterprise

RSS in the Enterprise "Respected strategic consultant to the digital publishing industy EPS Ltd presents an unbiased examination of RSS in the Enterprise, highlighting use cases, cost/benefit analysis and how information professionals can fully exploit the benefits of RSS." White paper available with registration from Moreover.

RSS primer by Chris Sherman

Series about RSS - really simple syndication - by Chris Sherman at Searchday.

What is RSS, and Why Should You Care? (Aug 30) - short history along with basic description - "Acronyms aside, RSS fundamentally is a relatively simple specification that uses XML to organize and format web-based content in a standard way."

RSS Search Engines (Aug 31) - who produces RSS feeds and how you can search for them.

Choosing an RSS Reader (Sept 1) - recommends some of the best (or easiest) methods for receiving and reading RSS feeds. Doesn't mention Sage which can be used with the Firefox browser.

Business Use of Feeds

What Blogs, Podcasts, Feeds Mean to Bottom Line By Lisa Vaas, eWeek (Aug 25)

+ "average consumer of blogs, RSS/XML feeds and Podcasts is male, earns big bucks and, in the case of Podcasts, is a youngster"
+ "In a June survey of some 4,000 Internet users, Jupiter found that over the past year, only 11 percent had read a blog monthly or more frequently."
+ 7 percent of survey group have used podcasts
+"30 percent of companies with $50 million or more in annual revenue have deployed RSS feeds, according to the report, while another 28 percent have indicated they intend to offer RSS feeds this year."

Companies are slowly adopting RSS where it is clear that they have users who are RSS savvy - Continental Airlines has a RSS feed to promote vacation packages.

All in all this is still a small segment

RSS Mainstream

The Rise Of RSS by Tom Taulli, Forbes (Aug 17) - says that RSS is mainstream now. Quotes Jim Moore, a co-founder of RSS Investors, who sees "opportunity in infrastructure products, such as those that will allow better filtering, search, scalability and security. "

Product development is still lively. Rojo Networks has launched a new RSS reader, which "goes beyond just tracking and reading RSS feeds. That is, it allows users to interact with their feeds. You can set up a list of contacts and send them articles. You can tag articles so Rojo can better determine relevant content for you. It also can measure the "buzz" in the community of its users, determining the most popular content. "

Mix RSS Feeds

Mix RSS Feeds, Put Them on Your Site ResearchBuzz (Aug 3) Use FeedDigest to create a mixed RSS feed for your site.

RSS users are info junkies

Who's Using RSS By Sean Michael Kerner, Clickz ( August 2, 2005 )

"Only two percent of adults in North America say they use RSS (define). That's compared with five percent of teens and young adults aged 12 to 21, according to research in a pair of new reports on marketing and RSS from Forrester Research. Forrester Research Analyst Charlene Li notes the RSS user numbers don't include users who unknowingly use RSS, such as via a portal like My Yahoo! for example."

NewsGator Enterprise Server for RSS

NewsGator Introduces NewsGator Enterprise Server EContent (Aug 5) -- "NewsGator Enterprise Server is a new product for aggregating and reading RSS content within the enterprise. "

Will Microsoft Take Over RSS Readers

Microsoft Will Swallow RSS by Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine (JUl 19)

"Internet Explorer will, on its own, automatically discover RSS feeds; and Longhorn—and other apps running inside the new OS—will be able to build feed lists based on a new set of RSS extensions that Microsoft plans on posting to a common source receptacle known as Common Code. Company execs even added that their way of organizing feed lists would be better than existing methods that force you to maintain separate feeds in each reader"

Yahoo RSS Search

Yahoo prepares blog and RSS search engine in Pandia World (Jul 11) - Yahoo adds blog and RSS feed search to its RSS newsreader capabiliites. Points to more information at Micropersuasion.

RSS 3rd leg for Longhorn

Opinions cross the spectrum over Microsoft's RSS support by Chris Jablonski, ZDNet - Between the Lines weblog (Jun 30) - Microsoft made a big announcement last week that it would have RSS as a third leg (after browsing and searching) as a means of accessing information baked into the Longhorn operating system and IE7.0.

Jablonski has compiled comments about this move by MSN. Among them is David Cousey at EWeek - RSS: It's Not Just for Bloggers Anymore - who wrote, "I've never felt that RSS did anything particularly interesting. It was just too limited. But with the Microsoft list extensions and presumably the weight of Redmond behind it, RSS could make subscribing to very specific information a common experience for users in about three years or so."

See preview of Longhorn with RSS in this video from Gnomedex. The Longhorn Browser and RSS technology team offer a peek at what's to come ZDNet Audio / Video.

"At Gnomedex '05 in Seattle, Dean Hachamovitch and Amar Gandhi both of Microsoft's Longhorn Browser and RSS Technology Group, give conference attendees a preview of how RSS will work in Microsoft's long awaited OS upgrade. 6 minutes 43 seconds Jun 28, 2005 1:59:00 PM"

Feed and Blog Discovery

How Search Engines Index RSS & Why It Doesn't Necessarily Matter by Danny Sullivan, SEW Blog (June 21)

Sullivan makes very clear that feeds and blogs are not the same thing and won't necessarily mean the same search tools.

People want to discover feeds in order to tap into the updates. There are feed search engines, but none, judging from his descriptions of Technorati, Bloglines, Feedster, and Yahoo's feed search, are especially strong. Of these, Bloglines and Yahoo go beyond just indexing the posts. The Web search engines by indexing the xml pages might become the means for feed discovery. (Though I hope they distinguish the feed page from the source.)

Finding blog-based news is another matter. News search engines tend not to pick up blogs. (Though Sullivan doesn't mention Findory, RocketNew, or Topix.net, all of which do get news from blogs.) Even so there are many weblogs that are not necessarily news. People are looking for ways to find topical blogs. Sullivan asks, "But where are the blog search services you'd have expected the major search engines to have rolled out by now?" Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves have made vague promises but no action.

What's the user to do? Until the specialty tools are refined, we can concentrate on searching for content and using terms to pick out weblogs and identify sites with feeds.

NewsIsFree Is Spiffier

NewisFree, a news aggregator and one of the first web-based newsreaders, has had a significant makeover. It has a fresh, more muted appearance, but has retained the tabbed access to services. There are 21,000 news sources and 44 languages - this is an international RSS centre.

The announcement stated that it has a new search technology -- "The advanced XML-based search engine SIETS allows its end users to read and search news headlines also from sites which do not provide RSS feeds. "

The news search has options to search "for relevance" (ranking on keyword matches) or title. The Advanced Search supports limits by source and language, category, popularity, and date.

At NewsIsFree you can create your own collections of sources and set up topics and tabs for them. There will be a new "power" way to browse these pages that puts controls into the top bar. One of those actions is to email or to blog selected items.

Paid members have additional capabilities through two premium services for exporting or having a portal version. Get all the extras by buying the Combo for USD 35 US/yr.

+ export an RSS feed for a search
+ add specific urls for feeds
+ add entries directly to your blog
+ news alerts

Blog Reader Tool

Something new for Windows IE people to try who love blogs - the Blog Navigator -- "It integrates into various blog search engines and can automatically determine RSS feeds from within properly coded websites."

Listed by Internet Scout Project.

Particle Tree Blog

Two discoveries: an excellent article on The Importance of RSS for Google, written by Kevin Hale for Particle Tree; and Particle Tree itself, a well presented blog about web applications.

In The Importance of RSS, Kevin Hale examines the "the state of RSS, taxonomies, advertising, and how it relates to the future of Google.” Google has been indexing rdf and xml files for over a year. Hale suspects Google is on the verge of establishing its own form of tagging of RSS feeds based on search terms. Ad Sense for RSS feeds is one reason Google has to get into this business. But that people may be turning from search to using RSS feeds is another. He says that, "An RSS feed is a blog distilled to its core essence"

"If RSS is getting face-time at the expense of search, Google has something to worry about. And it makes sense. From personal experience, I know my daily routine to keep up with the information overload doesn’t really involve searching anymore, but subscribing. Thanks to services like Del.icio.us, Technorati and Digg.com, people are spending a lot less time actively searching and more time passively reading what’s being updated in their readers. "

Lots in this article about tagging, social bookmarking, and improvements in RSS technology.

PubSub Gov

PubSub Unleashes a Bunch of Government-Related RSS Feeds, ResearchBuzz.com (June 3)

"PubSub has started a section of their site that provides RSS feeds on what's being said about US government official. You can get started at http://www.pubsub.com/features/government/ ."

Bloglines Bigger

Bloglines, the very popular online blog reader and blog centre, has 500 million blog and news feed articles and has doubled in size since January 2005.

Bloglines Tracks Half a Billion Blog Articles, Doubles Index Size in Six Months, PR Newswire (June 8)

FeedMesh for RSS Updates

RSS Updates Moving Beyond Pings By Matt Hicks, EWeek (May 31, 2005) -With millions of blogs wanting their updates to be known through pinging to aggregators, the aggregators are looking for ways to share the updates and lower the volume of pings. The approach and method is called FeedMesh.

"Technically, FeedMesh works based on a set of agreed-upon specifications where participants share their updates with one another, and the updates are pushed out to other members. It turns a process what has been based on feed aggregators actively polling for updates into a push model, Wyman said."

Newsgator - FeedDemon

NewsGator Technologies Acquires FeedDemon - EContent (May 17)

"NewsGator also announced that FeedDemon will integrate with the NewsGator Online synchronization platform and be available as part of all of NewsGator's paid subscriptions."

Bloglines for RSS feeds

Feed Simple By Robert MacMillan, Washington Post [subscription] (May 11) - Clear article on RSS - what it is and how to use it. Author uses Bloglines and loves it. Does mention some of the other easier ways to collect and read RSS feeds such as My Yahoo page, and built-in capabilities of Mozilla and Safari browsers.

Google Doing Some RSS

It's not full scale yet, but Google is showing interest in delivering ads to RSS feeds and to making it easier for GMail users to receive RSS. See Google Turns Attention to RSS by Kevin Newcomb | April 28, 2005

""This is gonna be huge," said Weblogs Inc. founder Jason Calacanis on his blog. He noted that being able to make money from RSS feeds allows publishers to offer full-text version, instead of just headlines designed to make the reader click through to the site so ads can be shown."

FeedBeep Alerts

Get Notification of RSS Feed Updates With Feedbeep, ResearchBuzz (Apr 20) -- FeedBeep will alert you to changes in RSS feeds you follow - and do so by calling your SMS mobile phone. Service costs money. Web page has some examples of why you would want to do this -- shopping deals, weather, events - but seems to me this would contribute even more to a ragged and far from tranquil life. Still - there could be a need ...

Newsreader Loyalties

The Need for Feed(s), by John Gartner, Wired (April 7) - Several newspapers will offer their readers their own reader software for RSS feeds in an effort to keep users loyal.

"The Los Angeles Times, the Denver Post and British newspaper the Guardian will soon offer stand-alone newsreader software for reading stories on their own websites and those of their competitors."

They'll be competing with Yahoo --

"Yahoo will soon add newsreader capability to its news page, according to Neil Budde, director of Yahoo News. He said that later this month Yahoo would unveil a beta that enables users to integrate any RSS feed into their news page. "We recognize that adding RSS feeds is a way to expand traffic to the site," Budde said. Yahoo has also begun to add RSS feeds specific to current events, such as the death of the Pope, which integrate content from several publishers."

RSS Feeds at Google

Why Google is Syndication Shy at Micro Persuasian (Apr 6) - Steve Rubel asks why does Google not offer web alert or news alert feeds while Yahoo and MSN do? Perhaps it's because such feeds don't have ads - yet.

RSS and Libraries

RSS: Moving Into the Mainstream by Randy Reichardt, Cameron Science and Technology Library, University of Alberta (Mar 22)

"The application of RSS feeds has moved into the library world, riding the wave of hundreds of library-related weblogs and other services."

Mentions several examples and some resources.

Factiva RSS

Factiva Adds More RSS? (Updated) in Library Stuff (Mar 22 ) - has screenshots.

Rocketnews Adds Ads to RSS

Rocketinfo Monetizes RSS Feeds With Kanoodle Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (Mar 23) [Registration required] -- Rocketinfo is partnering with Kanoodle to include content targeted ads on RSS feeds. Users of the news search engine Rocketnews can use RSS feeds Rocketnews has set up or create their own based on keyword searches.

"The Rocketinfo RSS feeds with content targeted ads from Kanoodle can be created using the RocketNews search engine (www.rocketnews.com) and the Rocket RSS Reader (http://reader.rocketinfo.com). The company also plans to integrate Kanoodle ads into the soon-to-be-released Rocket Desktop."

Article has some figures on the number of sources Rocketinfo has.
+ "RocketNews RSS feeds include content from the comprehensive Rocketinfo content database that includes over 16,000 current news sources plus thousands of weblog and RSS content sources."
+ "Rocketinfo's database of over 100,000 business news sources includes all of the world's leading news outlets including Reuters, AP, Bloomberg, the New York Times, BBC and extensive specialized news sources."

Feedster Syntax

Google Blogscoped has some syntax tips for people looking for feeds at Feedster -- Feedster Syntax Update (Mar 17)

Feedster has a very advanced query system and many features to make assessing and subscribing to feeds easier. Read the full Feedster Help page and the advanced syntax. The Advanced Page is a mini-course in search tactics. To note: the near operator, wildcard characters * and ?, number ranges -- 2000 .. 2004, and relevance rating.

RSS Feeds Everywhere

TVC ALert (Mar 10) has a list of more sources for RSS feeds. Moreover is on the list. Also NetworkWorldFusion -- about networks, of course.

RSS for Press Releases

24-7 Press Release.com says it will deliver RSS feeds of press release headlines. Add these to a web site, a news reader, or your My Yahoo page. It's not working at the moment - parsing error - but presumably they'll get past this. Site has releases by category (enterntainment, business, industry, fashion, medical ...) and region (all in the US.)

Also see Moreover's free (ad supported) RSS News Feeds by category.

FeedDirect also provides topic-based newsfeeds for web sites. Has a wizard to help customize the look.

Branded Newsreaders

The Great RSS Reader Bandwagon BY Pamela Parker, Clickz Experts (March 4, 2005 ) A few publishers (Guardian, LA Times, Denver Post) are offering RSS newsreaders to their readers. Consenda and Newsgator are two companies that provide the brandable newsreaders. Of course, they come with ads.

Of interest: ""Incorporating news readers into media sites or information sites is a really good idea because it provides a way for readers to be exposed to a new technology. They get the benefit of their destination's feeds at the same time and then further customize the package," she [Susan Mernit or 5ive] said. "I think that's a very good thing.""

Rogers and RSS

Rogers to Offer RSS Globe Technology (March 1) Rogers.com will be offering its internet users RSS technology, presumably a built-in reader. "Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet offers RSS integration on the Rogers Yahoo Hi-Speed Internet portal homepage." But there will be some Canadian content -- "Content sources range from the smallest blogs to major media outlets such as BBC, Financial Times, CBS Marketwatch, Sports Illustrated, CBC, Canadian Press and About.com." -- well, a little bit.

RSS Reader for MS Outlook

New Release of You Subscribe: RSS Adds Search, Enhanced Internet Explorer Toolbar and Podcast Support to RSS Reader for Microsoft Outlook Business Wire (Feb 28) Microsoft Outlook users can get RSS feeds delivered directly through You Subscribe: RSS. News release has a rundown of new features in version 0.83. Public preview is available at You Subscribe: RSS.

Ads for RSS Feeds

Kanoodle Announces 'BrightAds RSS' - First Self-Service RSS Feed Monetization and Distribution Service, in Partnership with Moreover Technologies PRNewswire via CBS Marketwatch (Feb 28)

Of interest: "Small- to medium-sized publishers will now be able to access and benefit from revenue-generating sponsored links as part of their RSS feed toolset. Through BrightAds RSS, Kanoodle's content-targeted sponsored links will be inserted directly into site owners' RSS feeds within posts or as individual posts. "

Nooked on RSS

Sligo firm launches RSS directory Deirdre McArdle, Yahoo UK News (Feb 25) - Nooked, an Irish firm with US offices that specializes in corporate communications, has a created a directory of RSS feeds to serve its largely business audience of sales and marketing executives, PR firms, journalists and analysts. Directory is organized somewhat by industry.

Nooked also has a good starter page of RSS Resources. Nooked offers a Web-based RSS publishing solution.

Of interest: "In the US, where RSS has really taken off, Pew Internet estimated that 5 percent of all US web news was read via RSS feeds." RSS is moving out of early adopter stage.

Adding RSS to your Web Site

The Aggravations of Aggregation by Walt Crawford, EContent (Jan/Feb 2005) Advice to people about setting up an RSS feed for your website.

RSS in Libraries - Audio

Libraries get hip to RSS -- Future Tense with Jon Gordon (Jan 21) - Audio file from Minnesota Public Radio in which Jon Gordon introduces RSS and talks to others about its use in libraries. Interviews a systems analyst from Seattle Public Library about its planned use to deliver notices and alerts on topics. Also interviews Stephen Abram of SIRSI about a RSS service it will be offering to libraries for use in delivering specialty feeds of content. Lastly, Stephen Cohen of LibraryStuff sees RSS becoming a "mainstream thing".

RSS Primer for Journalists

RSS for Journalists Your own personal Web butler, By Jonathan Dube, Poynter Online (Feb 15) - short primer on what RSS is, what you use to read the feeds, how you can find feeds. Written for journalists but useful to all.

Newsburst

New online RSS news aggregator / newsreader - this one from CNet - Newsburst It has a starter list from which new subscribers can select feeds. List looks good for technology. U.S. sources dominate the news category except for BBC.

From Newsburst -- "Newsburst is a personalized tool that tracks virtually any type of information on the Web: news, blogs, shopping lists, weather, search results, alerts, auctions and more."

Mentioned in CNET to Launch Web-Based RSS Reader Micro Persuasion (Feb 9)

Ask Jeeves Buys Bloglines

Ask Jeeves turns to bloggers By SIMON AVERY, Globe and Mail (Feb 9) Ask Jeeves bought the very successful (and non-commercial) Bloglines, an online news aggregator and weblog publishing centre. Why? Tap into a population of early adopters? (Blog readers and blog writers tend to be early adopters of technology.) Gain the support of those users? Have a place to put advertisements? Index the blog contents?

"Mark Fletcher, who founded Bloglines in 2003, had been running the firm out of his Silicon Valley home and had yet to commercialize it with advertisements. It remains to be seen how Ask Jeeves will monetize the popular service, but the company said Tuesday that it will combine Bloglines's leading aggregation technology with its own algorithmic search technology, but will maintain the Bloglines service and brand separately. In addition, Mr. Fletcher will stay on as vice-president and general manager of the Bloglines service."

Bloglines and Ask Jeeves issued a letter to its subscribers that is more forthcoming in describing reasons and benefits than we see from most other companies.

"By purchasing Bloglines, the leading free, online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing RSS news feeds and blogs, Ask Jeeves is able to add this rich web content to its search technologies."

RSS and Search

Bloglines and the Future of Blogs, RSS and Search Cory Kleinschmidt, Traffick.com (Feb 6) Ask.com bought Bloglines, an online RSS newsfeed aggregator. Kleinschmidt sees an "intersection of search engines, blogs and RSS technology".

Newsplorer

Newsplorer is a "fully skinnable news reader application" (meaning you can shape it into the window you want) that handles RSS formats (though Atom is not listed) and works with Windows 95 and above. Users can group by category and see most recent results in the system tray. Recommended by Internet Scout Report.

Tagging RSS Feeds at Feedmaker

RSS - A Chat with the Creator of Feedmarker by Steven Cohen, ResourceShelf (Jan 28) Interview with Bruno Bornsztein, creator of Feedmarker, a aggregator for RSS feeds. The nifty thing is that people can classify the feeds using tags.

Newsreader for Firefox

Another RSS newsreader for Firefox browser -- Wizz RSS NewsReader. Web site has a large screenshot - otherwise not much information.

My MSN Has RSS (YES)

MSN Adds RSS Aggregation and Directory By Brice Dunwoodie, CMSWire (Jan 19) Announces that Microsoft's My MSN portal of personal pages will accept RSS feeds and that Microsoft has created a RSS directory and will be supporting a blogger, a la Google. However, no sign of this information at http://www.microsoft.com/ yet, and of course, no mention of it at the Canadian version of My MSN done in partnership with Sympatico.

Genie Tyburski provides instructions on how to add feeds to your MSN page -- My MSN Supports RSS which probably work for the US MSN.

Addendum: Andrew Barrow at Spittoon.biz (wine, beer, and spirits in the UK) did a better job than I in sorting this out.

MSN does have RSS Syndication directory with mainly feeds from MSNBC News. And there is a Getting Started page about RSS that has information about using My MSN as a newsreader. (Although those instructions do not work with SympaticoMSN.) And lastly there is information for bloggers who want to be picked up by MSN -- Guidelines for Publishers. And, best of all, clicking on the My MSN button on Spittoon.biz does add that feed to my SYMPATICO MSN page.

So for Canadian users of MSN, it's a partial. If you use Sympatico as your home page, keep an eye open for the MY MSN+ button at the blogs you visit.

MyMSN and RSS

MSN tests new blog, search features by Stephanie Olsen, CNet (Jan 11) MSN is copying Yahoo in its plans to add features to MY MSN for searching and syndicating blogs.

"In partnership with Moreover Technologies, Microsoft's Internet division will add features to MyMSN, its personalized Web service, that will let users find blogs and syndicate content using the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) format, according to company representatives."

Some primers on RSS

RSS Compendium has information on RSS readers, resources, tools, and history.

What are those orange boxes anyway? An introduction to RSS by Teri Vogel. SLA Chemistry Newsletter (Fall 2004) - includes a list of chemistry-related webfeedshttp://www.sla.org/division/dche/Newsletters/Fall_2004.pdf
see page 4 - an article about RSS by Teri Vogel

Both were mentioned in the Internet Resource Newsletter #124 (Jan 2005)

Also see The Role of RSS in Science Publishing - Syndication and Annotation on the Web by Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund. D-Lib Magazine (Dec 2004) -- "Syndication and annotation are the order of the day and are beginning to herald a new immediacy in communications and information provision. This paper describes the growing uptake of RSS within science publishing as seen from Nature Publishing Group's (NPG) [6] perspective."

An Introduction to Feeds at Feedster by Jessica Baumgart. See also tutorial on How to Search in Feedster. [Source: Resourceshelf.com]

RSS in Goverment

RSS Edges Into the Bureaucracy by Daniel Terdiman, Wired (Nov 16) RSS being adopted at all levels in government to disseminate information.

Metrofeed for Toronto

Metrofeed gathers up RSS feeds for a local area into one place. The Toronto Metrofeed offers weather, events. It is still in beta - be patient with the load. Among the main feeds are the Canadian Government News, Better Living Centre, Toronto Bloggers, Toronto MetroBloggers. Can view entries by time and source. Add this page to your newsreader.

Other cities: Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, San Diego, Washington, DC, London England

See Say Hello to MetroFeed by Gary Price (Oct 25)

NewsGator free

NewsGator RSS Reader Gets Fahree Researchbuzz (Oct 25)- recommends the now FREE online NewsGator newsreader for handling RSS feeds.

Feedster Hacks

New blog from Steven M Cohen about Feedster Hacks . Feedster (feedster.net) is the blog search engine, and a feedster hack, according to Cohen, "can include a bookmarklet, an advanced search mechanism, or even a useful way of using Feedster to fit your RSS/weblog searching needs."

RSS Primer

One-stop way to read news, blogs online - RSS allows users to get free, Automatic feeds Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle (Oct 25) - Another primer about using a RSS aggregator / newsreader to read news online. Of interest - "The future of RSS will move beyond text, according to many industry experts. Music, radio and video, already available in RSS feeds to a limited extent, will probably become more popular, they said."

RSS and Atom Feeds Wildly Popular

Should All Sites Syndicate? by Zachary Rodgers, Clickz News (October 4, 2004) Yahoo by introducing the RSS news reader to its MyYahoo has boosted online syndication. Will every site produce a feed? Is "the adoption of this technology ... outpacing the emergence of business models to support it."

Blogdigger

Blogdigger has several tools for the RSS news feed fan" create a RSS feed for a search, create a group of RSS sources and receive them as one feed, get all posts that link to a url.

Newsgator

NewsGator Announces Three Partnerships to Drive RSS Platform & Adoption EContent (Oct 1) "NewsGator customers can now synchronize their online subscription information with FeedDemon, they can enjoy a wider range of search content in their custom search feeds, and they will experience a tighter integration with weblog platforms."

My Yahoo a Newsreader

Yahoo! now! sucks! - official By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco. The Register (Sep 29) Software applications for reading RSS news feeds will wither away in the face of the latest improvements to MyYahoo. As well browsers like Mozilla, Opera and Safari have been making RSS reading easier.

Rocketnews will produce rss feeds

Rocketinfo Muscles Up Popular RocketNews Search Engine By Adding Ability to Create RSS Feeds Business Wire via CBS Marketwatch (subscription) (Sep 28) Users of Rocketnews for current news will be able to save a search as a RSS feed and be updated daily. Rocketnews picks up 11,000 internet news sources and 70,000 RSS and weblog sources.

RSS for the enterprise

RSS Makes Enterprise Headlines By Anne Chen, EWeek (Sep 20) RSS based on a weblog can be used as a content management system, and can also be applied to calendaring. Article mentions that RSS will become more accepted as readers are incorporated into the browser.

RSS in the library

Rich Site Services: Web Feeds for Extended Information and Library Services by Gerry McKiernan. lLRX (Sept 20) - Use of RSS in libraries to send out information on current events and offerings, and provide current awareness services. Has many good examples.

Put RSS Feed on Page

RSS Digest is a new tool for creating the javascript code for adding a news feed to web page. It's simple to use and the format can be somewhat adjusted. Peter Cooper in the UK is the technical whiz on this.

Amazon Price Watch

Watchcow.net will watch for prices on a wishlist at Amazon and deliver the information through a RSS feed to a newsreader.

Newsmasters

Robin Good gives examples of what he considers good "newsmastering" - the masterful use of RSS feeds for communication and publishing. RSS Wave: Good Examples Of Newsmaster Sites (Sept 17)

Eurekster meet Feester

Feedster Powers RSS and Blog Search Results for Eurekster - News Search Expands the Scope of Search Engine Powered by Social Networking Technology PRWeb (Sept 16) Mainly - "Eurekster’s users will be able to create custom FeedPapers to distribute to their networks. "

Findory Inline News

Put the news you find through Findory on your weblog with Findory Inline News.

Personalized news is everywhere Geeking with Greg (Sep 10)

There is a Bloggery Inline News too. See Gary Price -- News Search Findory

RSS a killer ap

Killer Desktop Apps, Part 4: Feed Me by Pete Lerma, ClickZ (Sep 7) - Another convert to RSS feeds - good overview article.

Topix.net for new content

The Daily Internet. Topix.net weblog. Rick Skrenta of Topix.net sees weblogs and blogging as a kind of second coming for the Usenet newsgroup. Usenet newsgroups have declined in importance but at one time they were the major source for grass roots opinion, comment, amd help. Today's blogosphere because it is author based doesn't have the spam or anarchy (he feels) of Usenet. But -- "is this [blogging] going to be the domain a small, self-selected technical (or perhaps literary) elite, or will it have broader mainstream significance?" Topix.net is betting on the second as it performs "editorial automation" on the constant stream of new news and content.

Feed Search

Feed Search vs Web Search at Jeremy Zawodny's blog (Aug 27) - notes that web search engines can't keep up with latest changes at web sites, but maybe searching feeds from web sites will - in time. Concludes -- "The model of "search and find" or "browse and read" will turn into "search, find, and subscribe" for a growing segment of Internet users and it will really change how they deal with information on the web."

Refers to Why Hasn’t Anyone Figured Out How To Do Feed Searches? by Joseph Scott - reviews the capabilities (still very limited) of Feed Search engines.

RSS Calendar

RSS gets down to business CNet via Globe and Mail (Aug 17)

Share your calendar with others by converting it to an RSS feed. "The RSSCalendar program allows users to convert and publish their calendar data as an RSS feed. Friends, co-workers and customers can subscribe to the calendar feed and automatically receive notices of new appointments, which can be viewed through an RSS reader or imported to a Web-based calendar or Microsoft Outlook."

All Headlines News has rss

All Headline News now offers RSS newsfeeds for its topics. Apart from the broad topics: Top, Business, Entertainment, Health, Offbeat, Politics, Sports, Technology, World, there are 100s of specific topics - acupuncture, legumes, Toronto. It draws from 7,500 sources. There are for-fee subscription plans for putting news feeds on a web site. This service seems to have improved over the past year. Could be another good replacement for Moreover especially when using a newsreader.

NewzAlert

NewzAlert.com is billed as a RSS portal "From RSS feeds organized by category through tools for creating and publishing feeds to tools for viewing RSS feeds, NewzAlert.com offers it all in an easy, professional and stylish interface." [From press release -- NewzAlert.com for all your RSS and XML news feed needs (July 8)]

NewzAlert offers software for receiving feeds and for creating them, and has a directory to feeds by topic. Content is still thin. Directory isn't well populated yet. Newsreader software is limited to FeedDemon and two versions from CastleNews. For creating and publishing RSS feeds there is NewzAlert Composer.

XML News Feeds

FeedsFarm picks up XML news feeds from blogs and websites that are news related. It's new - just 2,525 feeds at this time. News is aggregated into a few major topics and may also be searched. Available in english, french, dutch and german. Reviewed in ResearchBuzz.

BlogBridge as Blog Reader

BlogBridge is a new blog reader for managing RSS feeds, designed (it says) for the "non-technical user". At present it supports the RSS formats but not Atom (coming later). It can track read and unread articles and has many display options. This application (download) works with Windows, Mac, and Linux. The FAQ compares BlogBridge to FeedDemon and notes: "The two unique capabilities of BlogBridge are: the heuristics to help the user add new and prune out old feeds based on a variety of factors, and the ability for BlogBridge to directly tap into various web-based indexes and resources to help the user get more done."

Recommended in the July 23, 2004 issue of Scout Report

Ingenta does RSS

Ingenta, provider of publication and distribution services for electronic journal and print, will be providing table of content updates updates as RSS feeds.
Ingenta Introduces RSS Feeds EContent (July 9)

Ingenta Adds RSS Feeds By Steven Cohen, ResourceShelf (July 13) - more information on features.

RSS in perspective

"RSS: Less hype, more action" By Roddy MacLeod Freepint (June 17, 2004) Roddy MacLeod who edits the Internet Resources newsletter in the UK describes RSS in this Freepint article and names several practical ways the Library community can use RSS to receive or deliver. But he says, RSS is not a revolution.

Will Google Support RSS?

Google mulls RSS support By Stefanie Olsen and Evan Hansen CNET News.com ( June 9, 2004)

"Google is considering renewing support for the popular RSS Web publishing format in some of its services, CNET News.com has learned, marking the latest twist in a burgeoning standards war over technology that could change how people read the news"

The debate of RSS vs Atom as the format for news feeds continues to hamstring the industry. Google opted to support Atom as the syndication format for Blogger.com. But many others use RSS including publishers and computer makers. Having two formats is befuddling to users and makes the news readers more complex.

RSS news from libraries

Gerry Mckiernan is the "syndicated librarian" at Iowa State University. He has put up a new site called Rich Site Services - a categorized registry
of library services that are delivered or provided through RSS/XML feeds. List seems very short at the moment.

TodaysPapers newsreading

New service TodaysPapers.com pulls RSS news feeds to create a personal page of news. It promises a "unique solution for information and news junkies". Register with zip code or postal code to get a page supposedly more localized. Except in the case of my Toronto postal code I lost the one Canadian news story about Anglicans and gay marriage and got many more UK-related stories from BBC.

First page displays top stories first, and stories by topic - US, World, Sci/Tech, Business etc. Click on category heading to get full index of items. These may be from a news source such as Reuters or a weblog. There is some tracking of common interests similar to Amazon's "other readers also read". Readers can comment on articles.

See ResearchBuzz review -- TodaysPapers Turns RSS Feeds Into A Big Ol' Community (may 28)

RocketNews RSS

RocketInfo has added some features to its free RSS reader - http://reader.rocketinfo.com/desktop/. This is a web-based news reader that works with any browser or operating system. It handles RSS and Atom feeds. Subscription is easy - just email address and a password. You can select channels from a directory, or search for words in the title or description of a feed. You can also create a keyword search on the 11,000 sources that RocketNews watches and save that search as its own RSS feed. All in all this newsreader ranks among the easiest and having the most function.

Gary Price wrote about Rocketnews reader in Resource Shelf (May 29)

News readers

A Scan of the Headline Scanners by Ryan Singel. Wired (May 21, 2004) - looks at several aggregators (aka newsreaders or RSS readers). These are the tools for picking up and reading RSS feeds. Bloglines is webbased. Others mentioned include Sharpreader for Microsoft.net, Newsgator for MS Outlook (but there are some disadvantages), KlipFolio, NewNewsWire for the Mac, and NewsMonster for Netscape.

Complete RSS

Complete RSS - a new tool for searching for RSS feeds and subscribing to them. It recommends Pluck - a free download that works with Internet Explorer on Windows 2000 and higher that provides a news reader and power search function. You can also create up to 3 custom feeds based on keyword search terms - essentially a save search service. Custom feeds are powered by News Trove. Complete RSS has a page of tips and tricks about RSS feeds. Site seems well put together. Bloglines is similar but provides web-based rss reading, rather than through additional software.

Reuters RSS

Reuters RSS Reuters (May 11) Reuters is pulling its feeds out of services like Yahoo but has added a number of RSS feeds for individuals. Standard topics are here: top news, business news, US news, sports, entertainment, etc.

RSS Readers Greedy

Will RSS Readers Clog the Web? by Ryan Singel. Wired (April 30) The newsreader software used to pick up RSS news feeds from sites is bogging down the servers because of the amount of checking they do. "The trouble is, aggregators are greedy. They constantly check websites that use RSS, always searching for new content. Whereas a human reader may scan headlines on The New York Times website once a day, aggregators check the site hourly or even more frequently. " Some are proposing converting RSS Readers to a peer-to-peer network - one would check for many.

NewsIsFree Changes

Some changes at NewsIsFree, the web-based RSS newsreader. It has nearly 10,000 feeds in 26 languages. Interface has been changed. Colours are easier to read and page seems better organized with the choices on the left rather than right. Premium users at $20 / year can set up news alerts, review recent clicks, post news items to their own weblogs. All the changes are listed at Site Update (April 16, 2004). Warning: keep your popup blocker on while you use NewsIsFree.

Newsreader on TV

NewsGator will deliver RSS news feeds directly to a TV set complete with audio and video. Will this revolutionize the news cast? Can we arrange to only hear stories we want to hear about? Will I be able to exclude murder, arson, war?

NewsGator Introduces Media Center Edition EContent xtra (April 16)

NewsGator began as a newsreader that runs in Microsoft Outlook but will now work with Eudora, Entourage, AppleMail and more. NewsGator has an online web version for subscribers, and on a cell phone or PDA.

There will be no escaping reading syndicated feeds from news sources, weblogs, and whatever else you set up.

Chick on RSS

Cindy Chick has several short tutorials on RSS in her weblog - LawLibTech - what it is, how to get started, using Bloglines (her newsreader of choice). See the topic for RSS, XML, Newsfeeds. This weblog covers topics of interest to librarians (especially legal) and information professionals. Chick also writes for LLRX.com

Advanced Search at RocketNews and RSS

Gary Price has information on new advanced search features at RocketNews. (April 13)

Advanced Search page presents boxes for ALL words, ANY, or NONE, and additional settings for category of news, location (by continent), date and date range (but only up to 5 days). Can sort by relevance or date. Can remove or display duplicate articles.

Advanced Search will only show as an option on the first page of results - not on the front page.

People who use the new and free RSS Newsreader from Rocket News may also generate a RSS news feed from a keyword search by clicking on a new Quick Launch button. This applies as well to the for-fee RocketInfo Desktop product which has a newsreader component along with many other features for finding and reading news and weblogs.

There is also an XML button to generate a news feed to be plugged into other newsreaders.

These changes at RocketNews make the free search platform more useful, but I'm still hoping to see title search and lead paragraph - some day.

The Advanced Search page mentions that the Quick Launch button is available to everyone to use on their own web site as a way of distributing content through the Rocketinfo RSS reader - but it doesn't work at the moment.

Rocket Technologies released a Rocketinfo press release. (Mainly I wish these names could be rationalized to one spelling of one name.)

Rocketnews is at www.rocketnews.com.

No Google News RSS

Google Moves to Block RSS Scraping By Ryan Naraine. Internet News.com (April 1) -- British programmer Julian Bond was forced by Google to stop creating a RSS feed from a Google News search. Bond has switched to Yahoo, and criticizes Google for being so slow to offer RSS options. Bond's site is http://www.voidstar.com/gnews2rss.php.

RSS the new Pointcast

RSS holds promise for on-line news delivery By Jack Kapica. Globe and Mail (April 1) Likens RSS news feeds and news readers to the old push news format of Pointcast several years ago. Kapica uses FeedDemon as his RSS reader.

Dogpile Toolbar

Gary Price at SearchDay says Dogpile Enhances Toolbar with News Feeds (March 29) Dogpile toolbar now includes a RSS newsreader and will also display favourite feeds in a scrolling ticker. You gotta love news feeds to go for scrolling ticker.

RocketNews RSS Reader

RcoketNews has redesigned its news site and added a RSS Reader. The redesign shows one channel at a time (World, Technology etc) and includes a photo. News search defaults to today and yesterday. After the first search you can raise that to 4 days ago. There are no other limiting options.

The RSS Reader is a download. It's compliant with all RSS forms and Atom. You can create a RSS feed channel using your own keywords. The functionality and display is the same as that contained in the for-fee RocketInfo Desktop - except that RocketInfo has more features for reading and saving news.

Oddly, Rocketinfo Desktop is not promoted at the RocketNews site. Might just have been an oversight in the redesign.

Rocketinfo launches free Rocketinfo RSS Reader (March 9)

ATOM vs RSS

Blog format truce proposed by Paul Festa. CNet News (March 8) "Dave Winer, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School who is commonly considered the arbiter of the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) format, proposed on his Scripting.com Web log that the format could merge with Atom, a competitor launched in the summer. "

Infospace Toolbar for RSS

InfoSpace Latest Search Supporter of XML Syndication By Matt Hicks. eWeek (March 8)

"InfoSpace Inc. is adding the ability to read XML syndication feeds into the next release of its search toolbar planned for April, joining the growing ranks of search companies supporting the technology. "... "InfoSpace, likewise, is planning features in its toolbar release to simplify the process for subscribing to XML feeds. A setup feature called "Search Page" will scan an open Web page for RSS or Atom feeds, and then let a user decide whether to add them to the toolbar. "

Amazon and RSS

Amazon offers RSS feeds now but to figure it out you need see Genie Tyburski's article -- Amazon Launches RSS News Feeds (March 5)

RSS Toolkit

RSS: Extra! Extra! Read all about it! by Rod Chapman. Information Highways (March / April 2004)

Industry Brains

IndustryBrains Introduces Paid Listings on RSS Feeds EContent (March 2) -- "IndustryBrains, a business performance-based media firm that specializes in contextual, site-specific advertising, has expanded its business to include syndication of paid listings to publishers participating in RSS-driven content feeds."

RSS Almost Mainstream

Enthusiasts Call Web Feed Next Big Thing by Frank Bajak. AP via Yahoo News (Feb 27) - Another enthusiastic article about RSS with many examples of new adoptees - recall notices from the U.S. Product Safety Commission? Good quote -- "RSS has been called the TiVo (news - web sites) of the Web, the first "killer app" of the anticipated automation of social and commercial transactions online using the Web's second-generation XML (extensible markup language) standard. "

News -- "Yahoo's new search engine trolls through RSS feeds in addition to Web pages. And a five-person company called Feedster.com is trying to build a business around customizing searches of 500,000 feeds — and then delivering you the search results in a single feed. '

Predictions are - RSS will go mainstream in 2004.

RSS and Noise

RSS: A Big Success In Danger of Failure By Bill Burnham. The Weekly Read (Feb 20, 2004) - RSS is excellent as a form of sign-up push, but there are now so many channels that the noise is deafening. How does one find good feeds on topics? Burnham suggests classification and taxonomies - but how would such a system be implemented? He points to services like Reuters and Thomson as intermediaries that have solved this problem in other fields. Would they like to take this on? Would people pay for it?

RSS ResearchBuzz News

ResearchBuzz has several interesting items on RSS this week.

- Get RSS Feeds from the Open Directory Project
- Another Roll-Your-Own-Custom-RSS-Feed: Rollup
- Feedster Lets You Roll Your Own RSS Feedpapers

Tools for the Newsmaster

Companies needing to get control over the wash of information now available through RSS feeds may wish to appoint a Newsmaster. Robin Good has coined this term - "a new type of webmaster who specializes in crafting uniquely powerful magic search formulas generating continuous RSS feed on narrowly selected topics". The person would select the sources, fine tune the search queries, and create specialized topical information channels for distribution. The author is doing something of a riff on the FeedPaper proposed by Feedster -- "Feedpaper is a web-based and RSS-enabled micropublication on any topic of its creators choosing. " There are several links to RSS-related articles by Good and many tool sets. This article will give many ideas on how to approach delivering an information service to employees, customers, and niche communities. Robin Good also has a modestly priced NewsMaster's Toolkit.
The Birth Of The NewsMaster: The Network Starts To Organize Itself in MasterNewMedia (Feb 19)

RSS vs Atom

Google spurns RSS for rising blog format by Paul Festa. CNet News (Feb 11) Just as RSS comes on mainstream Atom, an alternative format for news feeds, challenges the RSS supremacy. And Google is backing Atom by offering only that format to members of Blogger.com. Meantime, Yahoo went with RSS - adding the RSS newsreader facility to its myYahoo. The dispute seems to be over control and open standards.

""RSS has long been controlled by a single vendor or entity," said Mark Pilgrim, an early contributor to Atom. "Atom's an open standard, so people can point at the spec and say they're conforming to it, and it's not controlled by one of their competitors. And RSS is. It's no surprise that the vendors in control of RSS are upset about this. Open standards benefit everyone but them.""

RSS better than a newsletter

The Buzz Continues: RSS and Newsletters by Kathleen Goodwin. Clickz.com (Feb 9) - why RSS is better than the e-newsletter.

"RSS allows marketers (particularly newsletter publishers) to make their content available to any interested constituency in a number of new and interesting ways. With an RSS feed, readers can receive article-summary information, with headlines, short abstracts, and links to online content and full stories. People can subscribe to RSS feeds and receive them at the time and place of their choosing, often sidestepping many e-mail delivery issues. "

Yahoo RSS Beta

Subscribers to myYahoo may add RSS feeds to their news page. This will make MyYahoo a web-based newsreader as well as a source of headline news from major sources. RSS Reader is in Beta - but it has reached Toronto. It is easy to add sources by searching on keyword or site or simply entering the url of a RSS file.

Yahoo Launches RSS Aggregator Beta By Matt Hicks. eWeek (Jan 23)

More information at RSS Headlines Module - FAQ

Email to RSS

iUpload Announces MailbyRSS in EContent (Jan 23)

Could there be a more definite sign that RSS will soon be the delivery mode of choice for e-newsletters? MailbyRSS lets one author RSS feeds by email. Send the e-newsletter by email to MailbyRSS, and it will convert it to a RSS feed for subscribers to pick up. Avoids the problems of mail servers. People can opt-in to the RSS feed at the website. Company does not have to fuss with creating the RSS file. Service is free at the moment.

"MailbyRSS is intended to allow organizations to replace or augment their opt-in email campaigns with RSS feeds, providing them a way to ensure that the information they publish reaches subscribers without being filtered out by spam lists or filters. MailbyRSS accepts both text and rich content email, requires no new computer hardware or software, and is invoked by emailing content to a free MailbyRSS account."

iUpload MailbyRSS has a list of example uses. Brilliant.

RSS in Government

RSS in Government is a weblog for "News about how RSS is being used by international, federal, state, and local governments". http://www.rssgov.com/. Ray Matthews tracks news about RSS and especially its use by governments. There are categories for several State governments in the US but also one on Canada. Matthews also has a collection of links to RSS resources and events. (Site was mentioned at Researchbuzz.com)

RSS Primer

'Push' technology gets a nudge By Hiawatha Bray. Boston.com (Jan 5) - How the idea of Pushing news evolved to RSS for automatically receiving updates. Has the basics on how to read RSS and how to produce it.

RSS for My Yahoo

Yahoo, NewsGator Extend RSS Aggregation By Ryan Naraine, InternetNews.com (Jan 8, 2004) Yahoo may be adding a RSS aggregator to MyYahoo.

"A full rollout of the aggregator, expected in coming months, would be the first time Yahoo opens its pages to external, third-party links. Right now, the 'My Yahoo' feature integrates content (news, weather, sports scores, stock quotes) within Yahoo's own pages.

Once users add RSS feeds to their 'My Yahoo' module, the portal would be linking out to content from outside its network. It is not clear how that fits into Yahoo's ad-driven business model, which is heavily dependent on its own Web traffic."

NewsGator Online Services

Press Release - NewsGator Online Services Provides Access to Exciting New Content from Multiple Devices and Platforms (Jan 7 )

NewsGator Technologies, developer of the popular NewsGator software for subscribing to RSS feeds, now offers a web-based newsreader of RSS feeds. NewsGator Online Services will let people read subscribed content from the web reader, through their email (requires POP3), and mobile devices that read HTML. Price will be $5.95 US / month. Service will start Jan 19, 2004.

Full description of new service at eContent (Jan 13) - NewsGator Announces Online Services

Weblogs and RSS for Educators

Blogging and RSS — The "What's It?" and "How To" of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators by Will Richardson. Multimedia and Internet @ Schools (Jan 2004)

"... more and more teachers and schools are starting to experiment with the technology as a way to communicate with students and parents, archive and publish student work, learn with far-flung collaborators, and "manage" the knowledge that members of the school community create. In fact, many are seeing Weblogs as a cheaper alternative to course management systems. "

Describes the value of weblogs as a content management tool and RSS as a delivery method. Includes some tools for getting started.

RSS aggregators mentioned were NetNewsWire [http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/] (for Mac OS X only) and SharpReader [http://www.sharpreader.net/] - both downloads. Also the web-based Bloglines [http://www.bloglines.com].

RSS for current awareness

December 2003 newletter from Information Technology Division of SLA has a Special: RSS? What is it? (PDF)

RSS -Syndication for Real People Right Now by Marie C. Kaddell
RSS – A Really Simple Solution for the News Needy by Greg Kaplan
Personalized Content – The future of RSS by Steven M. Cohen

Using News Aggregators

Beating Information Overload with News Aggregators by Dennis M. Kennedy . ABA Law Practice Management (November / December 2003) - Shows how to use a News Aggregator and RSS news feeds to stay uptodate without being overloaded. Recommends FeedDemon and Newzcrawler as two News Aggregators. Lists a sampling of blogs for lawyers.

Yahoo News RSS

ResearchBuzz says Yahoo News Offers Customizable RSS Files (Oct 8, 2003)

RSS Reader Tools

Startups Offer Online Publishing Alternatives Will These RSS Entrepreneurs Succeed? by Steve Outing. Editor and PUblisher (Sept 24)

Outing continues his consideration of RSS delivery as a publishing replacement to e-mail newsletters by looking at the RSS software for users. He notes that today's RSS applications have disadvantages - don't do alerts well, aren't automatic, require a lot of reading. But "the next wave of online publishing applications will solve those problems".

Some companies that might provide this next wave are:

- Toolbutton , an IE browser addon being developed in Edmonton Alberta
- Klip Folio, an awareness and notification tool from Serence in Ottawa, Ontario.
- Quikonnex, a publishing service based on RSS
- MyWireService, webbased service for reading news. Has nearly 3,000 news sources.

The Good and Bad of RSS

The Future of RSS - Is E-Mail Publishing Dead? RSS-based Information And News Feeds: Pros and Cons For Content Distribution Through RSS By Robin Good, LLRX.com (Sept 29, 2003)

Excellent analysis of the good and bad of using RSS for online publishing. It doesn't replace the two-way communication power of e-mail but it does compete with the e-mail newsletter. It is being much promoted as the solution to spam, but Robin Good does see problems and limitations for readers and publishers.

RSS Readers

RSS News Readers Browse for You By Jim Lynch PC Magazine (OCt 1)

FeedDemon - similar to an email client. Can track news by keyword.
FeedReader 2.5 - free but no frills.
NewsGator 1.3 - works with Microsoft Outlook and the .Net framework.
SharpReader 0.9.2.1 - free (donations invited) - requires .Net. Adding feeds is easy.

RSS vs EMail Newsletter

Will RSS kill the e-mail newsletter? System circumvents user's in-box By TESSA WEGERT Globe and Mail (Sep 25)

Chris Pirillo, founder of Lockergnome, says that email as a marketing tool is dead. Much better to deliver through RSS syndication.

RSS vs E-Mail

With E-mail Dying, RSS Offers Alternative by Steve Outing. E&P (AUg 27)

With e-mail delivery thwarted by spam blockers, RSS feeds may be the better way for subscribers to get their newsletters. Notes that 17% to 38% of e-mail doesn't reach customers. Lockergnome, the centre for technology newsletters, as an example, points subscribers to the XML/RSS feeds.

"RSS really is a better way, especially for those who regularly read a whole passel of Web sites, blogs, and/or e-newsletters. It replaces manually viewing a bunch of bookmarked sites with a single aggregation pane of fresh content, quickly consuming headlines and blurbs, and clicking through to the stuff that looks really interesting. It's a big time saver."

Aggregators

Aggregators Attack Info Overload by Ryan Singel. Wired (AUg 18) - people are using newsreaders like NewsGator to keep on top of news and blogs. Next step for newreaders may be collaborative filtering, similar to Amazon's recommendation system. NewsMonster (Netscape) has a voting mechanism in its for fee version.

Aggregators / Newreaders

Aggregators Attack Info Overload by Ryan Singel. Wired (Aug 18) - The number of aggregators / newsreaders available to people who prefer their news as an RSS/XML feed has exploded. Article mentions several.

RSS v Alternatives

Battle of the Blog: Dispute exposes bitter power struggle behind Web logs By Paul Festa. CNet News (Aug 4)

The push to develop a new format for syndicating content indicates just how important and popular this form of publishing has become. Dave Winer, previouly CEO of UserLand Software was the prime developer of RSS as we know it today. He is now at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Continuing as keeper of the code he has locked down the core of the code from further change. But some want more features in addition to plain syndication - such as publishing, archiving, and editing. Those arguing for an alternative include Sam Ruby of IBM supported also by Google, Six Apart (Movable Type), Tim Bray (co-creator of XML). Will a standard emerge from all of this?

RSS

RSS: Jim McGee in his blog McGee's Musings has brought together postings and comments about the widening use of RSS and information aggregation. There is increasing acceptance by publishers, business, and professionals. A look at recent user level activity in the RSS world (July 25)

Article mentions Info Aggregator - "an RSS-to-IMAP service. It lets you receive and read RSS feeds in your favourite mail client. It delivers all the latest news and blog posts directly to your mailbox."