Lab Sheet 1: RSS

Before we immerse ourselves in the details of xml it is a good idea to get a feel for how xml is being used on the web. RSS is easily the most popular xml vocabulary used on the web today, in part due to it's simplicity. In this lab we will explore different ways that RSS is used, from syndication of news to blog dissemination. We will also take some time to create our own RSS documents using both dedicated web applications and using a simple text editor such as notepad or textpad.

As the graphic to the right indicates, RSS is term that describes several different formats. Especially confusing is the fact that RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 have developed in parallel. We will focus on RSS 2.0 to begin with but end up with a discussion of Atom 1.0. A good intro to RSS can be found at xml.com. James Snell of IBM recently wrote a nice overview of Atom 1.0.

  1. News Feeds and Aggregators

    1. News Feeds: Look at some RSS feeds at popular sites(craigslist, nytimes.com, and flickr), view feeds in a viewer such as rss-xpress. How would you characterize the data that is stored in the RSS documents? Did you notice any difference between the vocabularies used by the various sites?
    2. Aggregators: Aggregators make it easy for consumers to view a number of chosen RSS feeds in one place. Sign up for a (free) account at one of the online aggregators (www.google.com/reader, www.feedster.com, www.technocrati.com) and add some feeds to create your own personal aggregator.

  2. Blogs

    1. Blogs: Blogs have become an important and popular example of some of the emerging technologies and ideas that we will explore in this course. If you don't already have one, create a personal BLOG using a (free) Blogger (a content management product that uses RSS) such as LiveJournal or MySpace. Create your first journal entry describing your prior experience with RSS or your first impressions of RSS and it's capabilities. Be sure to add some tags (categories); they will be useful in the next part of the lab.
    2. Syndication: The easiest way to register your blog with an aggregator is to visit their site and manually enter your blog info. Visit http://technorati.com/ping/ to manually register your blog. In the next part of the lab we will explore how technocrati enables consumers to find your blog based on the tagging information you attached to your blog earlier.

  3. Tagging Systems

    1. Tags: Visit http://technorati.com/tag/. The user interface on this page is often called a tag cloud. Clicking on one of the hyper linked keywords takes us to a page with recent blog posts that have been tagged using the keyword. For example the page http://technorati.com/tag/Movies has references to recent blog entries that have been tagged with the keyword Movies. You might have observed that the hyperlinked keywords on the http://technorati.com/tag/ page come in different sizes, the larger the hyperlink the more popular the tag. And only the most popular tags actually appear on the page. To find blogs entries with other tags just follow the same url convention we observed when going to blogs related to Movies. For example to see blogs that are of interest to Red Sox fans visit http://technorati.com/tag/redsox.
    2. Finding Your Blog at Technocrati: Hopefully your blog entry has been registered with the Technocrati system. Recall the tag (s) you used to categorize your blog entry and find the corresponding page on the Technocrati site to see if your entry shows up.

  4. Authoring RSS 2.0 Documents:

    1. Authoring Tools: By now you have perhaps observed that RSS documents have a simple structure. We can create our own RSS documents using an authoring tool such as RSS Headliner or using a text editor. Try out RSS Headliner and create an RSS 2.0 document representing this lab sheet. Save it to your drive.
    2. Using a Text Editor: While a tool like rssedit is useful to get a document started, modifying an existing document is easily accomplished with a simple text editor. (One of the main attractions of xml is that data and tags are always stored as text. More on this later in the course.) Try opening your page in a text editor (notepad, textpad, simpletext) and editing it. After making changes be sure to check that the document is still a well-formed xml document by opening in a browser (IE, Firefox). (You should make a couple of intentional errors to see what happens when you open a document that is not well-formed in a browser.)

  5. Atom 1.0:

    The competing RSS specifications can be understood as a competition between simplicity (RSS 2.0) and comprehensiveness (RSS 1.0). Atom is attempt to bridge the differences.
    1. After reading James Snell's overview of Atom 1.0 convert your rss 2.0 version of this lab page to Atom 1.0 using a text editor.

  6. Uploading Work to Personal Web Page:

    Upload your work in this lab to your personal page. This should include a links to your personal blog, the technocrati page that points to your blog entry, and the rss feed that you created to capture this lab sheet.