Syndicating

Blogger will allow a "feed." The feed lets subscribers know when you've posted a new blog.

This is RSS and Theresa mentioned it in our first class. RSS stands for (a) RDF Site Summary (and RDF stands for Resource Description Format) or (b) Really Simple Syndication. (Pick one.)

It's the standard that provides the syndication capability for blogs.

To subscribe to a feed, you need some software. I had trouble finding something compatible with my Mac OS X system. Newsmonster sounded good and is supposed to work on OS X with Netscape 7 but it didn't work here. I ended up with BottomFeeder. It's free and also available for Windows. Newsmonster is also free and likely works better on MS Windows systems than on Macs.

BottomFeeder's documentation leaves a lot to be desired. After a couple of hours, I finally feel I have some idea of how it works.

It comes with sample feeds and you can add your own. A good place to look for feeds is Syndic8.

BottomFeeder checks feeds hourly (you can adjust that) and lets you know if there is a new post at the sites in your subscription list. You can click on the listing and see the first sentence or so and decide if you want to read the whole article. You can then read it in BottomFeeder or have BottomFeeder send the link to your browser.

I am trying to syndicate my blog. Stay tuned.
- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 6:55 PM [to Del.icio.us]