5 New Internet Marketing Opportunities Through RSS

Rok Hrastnik | Contributing Writer | 2005-08-27

When it comes to new internet marketing opportunities for your business, RSS just might be the answer you were looking for. Here are just some of the new opportunities it can provide you with …

1. PODCASTING AND VIDEOCASTING
Podcasting (delivering internet audio content) and Videocasting (delivering internet video content) allow you to communicate via rich media messages, not only making your content more attractive and powerful, but also enabling a more personal »conversation« with your audiences.

Up until know, the internet was predominantly a textual channel. Adding audio and video to the mix, delivering both via RSS, goes beyond the basic capabilities provided by »traditional« internet content delivery channels. Rich media personalizes the internet experience and gives your company a distinguishable face, while at the same time providing you with a media platform to convey your message so that it is easier to understand, see and feel.

Think about ...

--> Delivering press releases in audio or video

--> Sending your customers a personal video message from the CEO

--> Doing audio interviews to expand your reach and provide more content to your visitors

--> Delivering video demonstrations of your products

--> Using video and audio to demonstrate how your customers and readers can easily resolve various issues that you are helping them with

--> Delivering important messages to your readers, customers and business partners via a more personal audio experience, instead of using impersonal e-mail communications

--> And so on ...

In addition, Podcasting and Videocasting form the basis of new business models, giving you the opportunity to expand your product base to include these formats with higher perceived value.

Customer education & support are improved as well, since you can now demonstrate key product usage points via online video à providing customer support content in a format, which can easily demonstrate everything you need to convey to your customers.

2. HIGH FREQUENCY CONTENT UPDATES

High frequency content updates, even on a daily or hourly basis, are now finally possible with RSS. No more need to hold on your important messages, news and other content for a week or even a month to include it in your e-zine --- with RSS you can update your content as often as you want/need, and your subscribers won't mind.

3. APPCASTING

Appcasting goes one step further, giving you the ability to deliver critical software updates and patches to your existing clients, without them having to visit your web site every week to see if the much needed update is already available or not.

4. PRODUCT NEWS, RELEASES AND UPDATES

Product news, releases and updates are now finally possible in an easy-to-consume way. Using RSS, you can provide your customers or prospects with simple tools to create their own »product feeds«, through which they'll be immediately notified when new products that precisely match their interests are available.

As soon as your product portfolio changes, so does the content in the RSS feeds that your customers are subscribed to.

Just think of the following possibilities ...

--> The search tool is one of the most often used in larger web stores, giving your visitors an easy way to find the products they are interested. But the same search results can be delivered via RSS as well. Imagine your customer doing a search for one of your product categories, and then also receiving a link to the RSS feed for those very same search results, to find out immediately when a new product matching his terms is released or available for order.

--> This works for complex searches as well. If your customers are in the habit of searching for specific product categories, but only in a specific price range, you can deliver those very same results to them via RSS, but with a small twist à as soon as a new product matching their terms, including the desired price, is launched, they are notified about it via RSS instantly. No need to visit your site again to do the time-consuming search; the release comes directly to them.

--> Of course, the same approach that many are already using for e-mail alerts can be used for RSS. Give your visitors a simple form using which they enter their criteria, and then give them access to an RSS feed bringing them product updates based exactly on their criteria. Why not just use e-mail? Because no one really wants more e-mail messages in their inboxes and no one wants to give away their personal information, while RSS is anonymous, doesn't require an e-mail address and is read when the customer decides he has the time.

5. PERSONALIZED CONTENT SERVICES

Personalized/customized database listings are quite similar to product updates, but relate to any kind of complex information you provide to your visitors, such as …

--> Job listings

--> Dating

--> Real estate

--> Etc.

Using RSS, your visitors can decide exactly what kind of »content« (in this case, an individual content item could be a new job listing) they are looking for and then have that content delivered directly to them, via their own personalized RSS feed.

And yet, all of these are just some examples of what you can do with RSS. The possibilities for new content delivery & business development models are quite endless.

For example, some companies are already giving their visitors the opportunity to track their FedEx, UPS and other packages via RSS feeds. Yet others are creating new services that allow you to receive critical information from an RSS feed to your mobile phone via SMS (such as getting an SMS notifying you that a new job matching your criteria is available). Yet again other sites enable you to keep track of when you need to return your library material, and even when your holds are ready and when they are about to expire, all this using RSS.

All of these are new business opportunities made possible with RSS, and each of them in a way improves lives of end-users, without placing a larger burden (more e-mail messages) on them.

The business of blog

The business of blogs

Mary Branscombe | London, United Kingdom  
  
25 August 2005 02:34

With a new blog created every second, how are you going to keep up with 900 000 posts a day across 15-million blogs? These blogs (short for web logs) are online journals written by people who might be talking about your organisation, or sharing information that could help you do your job. And if you have a company blog, how will customers find it among the millions of alternatives?

Traditional search engines are struggling to keep up with the rate at which people update their blogs, and specialist blog tracking sites such as Technorati and Bloglines have sprung up to help.

Search engines like Google treat blogs like any other website, and even the large numbers of blogs are a drop in the ocean compared to the rest of the web. As a result, they often get drowned out in search results. Clive Longbottom, an analyst from Quocirca, thinks that's not necessarily a bad thing for normal searches. "Who wants to have blog search results in the upper reaches of Google, MSN or Yahoo search results? Blogs, by their very nature, are personal thoughts and have therefore not gone through any editorial or peer control," he says.

If you want customers to find content from your company blogs, one solution is to include them on your regular website. Microsoft, for example, automatically pulls relevant content from employee blogs on to its product pages, along with threads from newsgroups, lists of chats and webcasts, security bulletins and other information that can be retrieved via web feeds such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

However, people searching specifically for blog posts should get better results from services such as Technorati, Blogpulse, Bloglines, IceRocket, Feedster, Rojo, Blinkx and PubSub. Some concentrate on blogs, others include any RSS feed. Some services crawl the web looking for blogs, some rely on blog software telling them about new posts -- and some do both.

Most blogging software includes the option to notify sites like Technorati when you make a post. David Sifry, Technorati's chief executive, says that on average, a post is indexed five minutes after you make it, and Bloglines aims to do the same. But if your hosting service doesn't offer that option, and doesn't make blogs available via RSS or Atom feeds, it's harder for the search sites to track it. Although users can always register their blogs with the blog search engines.

Last week, Feedster came up with a list of what it considers the top 500 blogs, but it excluded blogs from several hosted systems, such as LiveJournal, for technical reasons. Does that mean hosted blogs don't get indexed as well as those created with more sophisticated software such as Movable Type? Not necessarily.

Feedster's chief executive officer Scott Rafer points out that its search does cover hosted blogs, as well as RSS feeds from professionally published sites, as do the other services. Indeed, Sifry finds the standard templates of hosted services make them easier for Technorati to index.

Blinkx chooses how often to index a site not by how it's created or hosted but based on how often it comes up in search results. There's a sliding scale from sites that show up regularly and therefore get indexed every hour to those that are looked at only every three days.

Blog search also differs from web search in how the results are ranked. Most search tools show you the most recent posts first. According to Mark Fletcher of Bloglines: "With blog searches you're looking for timeliness; with a web search you're looking for authoritative results".

But you will also want to know how many people read a blog regularly: popularity doesn't guarantee credibility, but if a blog is influential, you need to know if your business or product is mentioned.

Searches also take into account how often a blog is updated and who links to it, though the issue of how to count and rate links is contentious. Some blogging services include automatic links that can skew the results, as can spam blogs crammed with links. Sifry talks about identifying bloggers who consistently start the stories others pick up, rather like tracking the outbreak of an epidemic and developing the equivalent of "PageRank for people".

Most of the services also let you save searches on the site. That provides a way to skim through blogs you already know about.

All the blog search services agree that the tools are still in development. They're not going to be the only players in the game, either. Bloglines' Mark Fletcher says we can expect to see blog search as a tool on every major search engine in the next six to nine months. This may lead to some takeovers. Ask Jeeves now owns Bloglines, and is putting the Bloglines notifier on its front page, while Intelliseek owns BlogPulse. Technorati is designing its own service for corporate tracking and business intelligence.

Tracking blogs is a lot of work, and most of the time you won't find anything significant. But it's starting to matter. As IceRocket's chief executive Blake Rhodes puts it: "If you're a business owner and you don't care about what bloggers are saying, you don't care about your business." - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

RSS Era Is Coming, But Public unware of RSS

By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco
Published Wednesday 24th August 2005 19:25 GMT

The majority of regular blog readers are completely unaware of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and the amount of passion the technology excites, it seems.

A Nielsen/Netratings' survey of 1,000 regular blog readers found 66 per cent do not understand RSS and have never even heard of the technology. Twenty three per cent claimed they understood RSS but did not use it.

That's a reality check for Silicon Valley technologists and venture capitalists debating and investing in RSS.

Last week, it emerged Microsoft will re-name RSS in the next version of its Internet Explorer (IE) browser and Windows Vista operating system to make it more, er, consumer friendly. Microsoft is using "web feeds" as a substitute name for RSS in the current IE beta.

Venture capitalists (VCs) and enthusiasts from the communications industry, meanwhile, announced ambitious plans for a $100m fund to invest in RSS in June. The fund will focus on news aggregation, blogs, search engines and applications capable of aggregating data for use in the financial and medical sectors.

Despite strong evidence of a huge knowledge gap and need for greater education surrounding RSS, there are some encouraging signs for VCs and start-ups. Eleven per cent of blog readers use RSS to sort through a growing tangle of blog and information feeds, according to Nielsen/Netratings. Nearly five percent use feed aggregation software and more than six per cent use a feed from an aggregating web site to monitor blog feeds.

"While RSS is an established technology, the growing popularity of blogs has catapulted RSS into the spotlight as a content personalization tool," Nielsen/Netratings senior research manager Jon Gibs said in a statement.

Blog traffic is up, too. The top fifty blogging and blog-related sites have grown 31 per cent to 29.3m unique visitors since the start of the year, accounting for one fifth of the internet's traffic. Microsoft's MSN Spaces was top with 947 per cent growth, while Fark.com and Blogger were second and third with 63 per cent and 45 per cent increases respectively.

Nielson believes these sites will ultimately lack the kinds of traffic that large advertising networks manage to draw, but that advertisers can still leverage bloggers to influence their peers in niche markets. "By associating their message with the blog's image, advertisers can legitimize new trends," Gibs said.®

RSS Won The Syndication Standards Battle

Sharon Housley | Contributing Writer | 2005-08-23

RSS appears to have conquered the last hurtle in becoming the industry syndication standard.

Microsoft's inclusion of RSS into the newest version of Internet Explorer and reports that RSS will be in Longhorn's coming release appears to be the final nail in the coffin of the Atom specification. Even Atom's steadfast supporter Google, appears to have seen the light. Google had previously acquired Blogger, a popular blogging tool that uses the Atom specification to syndicate the contents of blogs created on the Blogger platform. In the past Google had strategically steered clear of endorsing the RSS specification hoping that Atom, would take hold.

Google's recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification.

The adoption of a syndication standard was slowed by the struggle between Atom and RSS. Two defined syndication standards vying for the number one position. In an IT industry that clearly favors single standard solutions, Atom supporters claimed added flexibility, but RSS' wide sweeping support from heavy hitters like Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo. Along with the popularity surge of podcasting, which is based on the RSS 2.0 specification appears to have sealed the fate of the future syndication standard.

The history and relationship between RSS and Atom is a sordid tale that has hindered the progress of an online syndication standard. Now that the leader has been defined their is little in the way of RSS' growth. Businesses leery of becoming entwined in a standards struggle are now embracing RSS as a communication channel.

It is clear that those who have lined up behind RSS as the leading specification are the winners.

Oddly enough, while those entrenched in the industry acknowledge the difficulties with a dual standard, users rarely see a difference in feeds created using the Atom and RSS standards. Most popular RSS readers support reading feeds in both formats. Though the purpose of RSS and Atom is the same, the specification itself is very different, making it difficult and time consuming for tool developers to move between the dual standard.

Now that Atom's attempt at replacing RSS has fallen flat, the syndication arena will likely see significant innovation and progress.

Large companies are taking advantage of RSS' extendibility using namespaces adding needed tags. Apple has done this with iTunes, Microsoft for ordered lists, and Yahoo with MediaRSS. All use the same basic RSS 2.0 format but supports defined RSS' future is bright with many companies working proactively to unite a once divided standard.

RSS Reader NewsMac Pro 1.1 Adds Podcast Player

by Staff, 12:00 AM EDT, August 24th, 2005

ThinkMac Software has released NewsMac Pro 1.1, an update to its RSS reader utility that adds a podcast player which can remember where a user left off in a podcast. In addition, the interface has been updated, new themes have been added and a shortcut to the source list gives users instant access to newly-downloaded headlines. This is free for existing users; the full version is US$24.95 and requires Mac OS X v10.3.

Using RSS to increase your blog’s Traffic!

Using RSS to increase your blog’s Traffic!

Jack Humphrey Contributing Writer

In a very popular marketing forum recently I saw a post that blew me away. It was from someone asking if having a blog was really that big a deal in marketing their website!

Let's put it this way: simply putting a blog on your site does nothing for your traffic and links. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

But what novice marketers fail to realize is a blog that is RSS enabled is a powerful traffic generation tool in the right hands.

Webmasters who understand what to do with a blog once they install one are reaping huge rewards in targeted traffic, incoming links, and faster search engine spidering.

There are search engines on the web that deal in nothing but blogs and RSS feeds. Meaning you cannot and will not get into those engines without a blog. And you are missing some seriously easy traffic.

My blog feed is all over the web, passively linking right back to my site, my posts, and my products. People use my content feeds (RSS) without my having to ask them to do so. Other sites need content that is rich in the keywords I regularly use on my blog, so they grab my feed and benefit from content they don't have to write themselves.

Where do they find my feed? Not usually on the blog itself, but in the feed engines! Take a look at some to see what I am talking about:

http://daypop.com
http://syndic8.com
http://technorati.com

Some only take your RSS feed URL while others just want your blog index page. Submitting to the ever growing list of blog and RSS directories is the easiest way to get spidered by the regular engines and get your links into directories all over the world.

All you have to do is provide good content on your site's main topic on a regular basis. Whole sites are run on blog software nowadays because the power of RSS promotion makes promoting them so much easier than static html pages and regular search engines.

Getting into the directories is one thing. Now you need to beef up your promotion by pinging regularly. Some blogs like Wordpress will allow you to update a list of sites to "ping" every time you post.

Pinging is simply sending a quick notice through to each site on the web that tracks and updates the information they have about your blog. New post - new ping. One click and tons of sites all have the most recent posts to your blog!

I use http://pingoat.com lately with great results. I like to make sure I am pinging every blog engine out there. They have a considerable list of places to ping and I do it every time I post to my blog.

In a matter of hours I have search engines crawling my site for new pages. And since I link from my blog to the rest of my site, the people who come to the blog can get to every other part of my site with ease.

All of this is merely scratching the surface of what blogs and RSS feeds can do for your marketing efforts. Everyone is going to RSS to syndicate their content. If you aren't yet, you'd better start ASAP. Because you are getting left in the dust by your competition for your keywords.

After actively blogging, pinging, and submitting your blog feed and main URL to the blog engines for a couple months you are going to see amazing amounts of back links. And in far shorter time than it would take you with any other marketing method other than aggressive syndication of articles.

So if someone asks you if having a blog is really all that, now you can tell them what it's all about. It's not the blog, it's what you DO with it that counts.    

Advantages of RSS

Advantages of RSS

RSS has emerged as a simple but universal format for syndicating and sharing information over the Internet. How is this syndication and sharing style of communication different that other means of electronic communication? What advantages does it offer the enterprise?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) solves several problems:

1. RSS provides a way to "watch" information sources. RSS allows a person to establish a link to an information source and then watch for updates. The users need not go to the site; the new site content is delivered to them. With a RSS reader the user can consolidate the monitoring of many information resources into a single view. New items are quickly scanned and drilled into as needed.

2. RSS establishes common publisher-subscriber model for the internet. The publisher organizes related content into a particular subject matter topic or "channel" and exposes it on the web as a link or URL. Subscribers can link to these channels by referencing the URL from an RSS reader and receive ongoing updates as long as it suits their purpose.

3. Subscribers are in control. RSS puts the consumer in control of the information exchange. The subscriber can drop or add a channel at will.

4. RSS breaks the bonds of email. As soon as a publisher posts new information via RSS, the subscriber has access. There is immediacy and directness that bypasses problems with email.

5. RSS provides a predictable structure for easier integration. RSS is an XML format. This means it is structured to be machine readable and capable of acting as a message bridge between automated systems. Most computers are capable of generating their information in XML format and parsing the XML. This makes integration between business processes much easier and less costly.

6. RSS provides a quick read. RSS was designed first for simplicity of format, to support news and event summaries. This format allows for the quick scan of item abstract but includes web links that allow navigation to more extensive content hosted by the RSS provider.

7. Easier enterprise communications - bridging systems and people. To date, RSS has been used predominantly as a means to syndicate content from public web sites, driven by individual publishers seeking an audience for their special interest. This is a one-to-many, person-to-person communication at which RSS has excelled.

What Do I Need to Receive RSS Feeds?

What Do I Need to Receive RSS Feeds?
First, you need a so-called feed reader. Performing a search for "RSS Feed Readers" in any major online search engine such as Google.com or Yahoo! will produce a slew of software options — many of which are free or at little cost.
Once you've obtained a feed reader, subscribing to an RSS feed is as simple as looking for the appropriate XML code. Most Web sites that publish an RSS feed will display a tiny orange box or button labeled "RSS" or "XML."
Click the button and your Web browser typically goes to a page of cryptic code. Just copy the Web "address" or URL of that page and plug it into your feed reader. The software will then automatically retrieve and display that site's latest information.

Which Online Sites Use RSS?

Which Online Sites Use RSS?
For now, many technology-oriented Web sites such as Cnet.com, LockerGnome.com and Slashdot.org, offer RSS feeds to satisfy the crowds of computer "geeks" online.
You'll also find some Weblogs — or online diaries — run by savvy individuals also offer RSS feeds.
You can ABCNEWS.com's RSS headline service through the links at the top of the page.
Even online portal sites such as Yahoo! (news.yahoo.com/rss) are getting into the RSS craze.

Why Would Ordinary Web Users Like RSS?

Why Would Ordinary Web Users Like RSS?
For Web surfers, the advantages of RSS are quite simple: They save time and bandwidth.
Instead of remembering to visit a favorite Web site, the news comes directly into your computer daily or at whatever interval you want.
What's more, most RSS feeds contain just links, headlines, or brief synopsis of new information only. That means the small amount of Web data can be sent to any XML-compatible device — a cell phone, pager, or handheld computer — without a lengthy download process.
More importantly, RSS gives you control over receiving information you want without revealing information about yourself. Unlike subscribing to an e-mail newsletter, you never have to give out your e-mail address with an RSS feed. That avoids the possibility of receiving spam or unwanted junk e-mail from the Web site.

What Does RSS Mean for Site Publishers?

What Does RSS Mean for Site Publishers?
Through syndication, online content creators have a much easier way to get their information published and seen. For instance, a Web surfer who sees an RSS feed — say a ticker of top news stories — on one site might click on the content, which in turn drives more traffic back to the original Web site.
RSS can also be a way for Web sites to retain "loyalty" among visitors. By supplying the RSS code on the Web site, visitors can "subscribe" to the feed and automatically receive updates on their personal computers of new content on the site.
Such an RSS feed will free content creators from creating and sending e-mail reminders — many of which may be stopped by anti-spam filters.

What Is RSS?

What Is RSS?
Depending on who you ask, RSS stands for either "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication." But no matter what it's called, RSS is a new way to publish information online.
At the heart of the technology is special Web coding, called XML, that has been widely developed by the global online community over the past few years.
The XML code for RSS describes a new type of Web information called a "news feed." Essentially, the feeds can contain a summary and links of the new content on a Web site or anything else a creator desires to share. A company may publish an RSS feed that contains news of its latest products, for example.
Anyone — an online surfer or another Web site — can pick up the RSS codes and with the appropriate Web software display the information automatically.
The concept is similar to how a newswire service operates: Information published by one news organization can be "syndicated" — picked up and displayed — by any other news organization.

Ranks of RSS News Reader

Ranks of RSS News Reader

AmphetaDesk - Free, cross platform, open-sourced, syndicated news aggregator.
Radio Userland -News aggregator included with weblog software application for Macintosh and Microsoft platforms.
Sage - RSS and Atom feed aggregator for Mozilla and FireFox browsers.
Pluck - A tool that automatically retrieves RSS feeds then delivers the results for scanning and customized sorting.
BottomFeeder - A Smalltalk, desktop RSS Reader. Open source, runs on Windows, Mac, and various Unix flavors.
Planet - Server software that combines several feeds together and publishes them together on one web page.
MyHeadlines - Content syndication search engine and news reader that can be integrated into a website running PHP and MySQL.
Jyte - Cross platform news reader with RSS and Atom support, as well as news from major news sites and keyword searches.
TALAggregator - Multi-user web based RSS Aggregator. Caches feeds to MySQL database, handles bad RSS, and includes template driven interface.
Feed on Feeds - A Free PHP/MySQL based server-side RSS and Atom aggregator. All feeds are in one place, and users can read the latest news wherever they are.
Gush - Combines Jabber instant messaging with news aggregation and a split chat feature. [Windows, OS X, Linux]
Urchin RSS Aggregator - Perl, web based, customisable, RSS aggregator and filter that consumes RSS, Atom and screen-scraped HTML and produces RSS or XSLT-transformed output.
Wizz RSS News Reader - A simple RSS news reader extension for Firefox. Reads all versions of RSS. i.e. 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 1.0 (RDF) and 2.0.
FIRST SAY - Open source RSS news aggregator designed to build collections of feeds and provide a first page presentation of feeds from many sources.
phpNewsfork - Browser-based news channel and Weblog interface based on PHP, XML-RPC, and RSS. It uses the XML-RPC APIs from meerkat.oreillynet.com and syndic8.com, and does not require a database.
Aggreg8.net - RSS feed aggregator built on the Mozilla framework or XPFE. It uses XUL, Javascript, RDF, CSS, XPConnect, and XPCOM.
Parss Project - The general idea behind Parss is to solve the problem of countless individual (desktop) RSS viewers randomly and redundantly transferring and processing almost exactly the same set of RSS feeds.
Raggle - Open-source console-based RSS aggregator, written in Ruby, for Linux, Unix and Windows. Information for users and developers.
CafeRSS - Information and download for an RSS aggregator using PHP.
DogWalker - An extension to Adam Simpson's RawDog (web based aggregator python script). DogWalker is a script that periodically runs RawDog on webmaster's home PC and ftps the result to the site.
Mercury News Readers - Displays RSS, RDF and Atom feeds. Available as screensaver, news ticker, Internet Explorer toolbar, and feed reader application.
myRadio - Extension to Radio Userland aggregation from RSS to any data source, including XML, HTML, and SOAP.
TheYoke - A simple RSS aggregator designed for use on the UNIX command line.
News2Web - Takes a set of newsfeeds and publishes a webpage from them. Designed for corporate users.
Rnews - Server-side RSS aggregator written in php using MySQL as the back-end and uses magpierss for the RSS parser.
NewsFeed - A desktop RSS reader and aggregator in Python/Tk.
JavaScript RSS Reader - Downloadable script for reading RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 feeds.
RssDisplay - A quick Perl CGI to render an RSS feed in HTML for use in SSI on sites. This script does that very simply, yet with a small set of configurable options.
Rocketinfo Desktop - Search software for finding and sharing news with integrated solid RSS newsreader.
BlogMatrix - J鋑er - RSS syndication reader that uses a web browser to display content. J鋑er runs on both Windows and Macintosh OS 10.3.
Pears - Three-pane newsfeed (RSS/RDF and Atom) aggregator which caches downloaded feeds for offline use. It has a clean interface, and works on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.
QuikView Channel Viewer and Bookmark Server - Full channel RSS / XML viewer and bookmark server. A portable, cross-platform, sidebar application. Able to read all RSS versions.
Blagg - News aggregator for the Bloxsom weblogging system.
Peerkat - Cross-syndicated personal syndicated news aggregator for use with Python.
Rawdog - An aggregator written in Pythonthat supports RSS 0.9, 1.0, 2.0, CDF and Atom feeds.

Free best RSS feed generator

I have tried several RSS feed generator and I found that the RSS Builder 1.120 is the best one. It can support almost every language, and best of all, it is free. Other softerware, such as FeedForAll is good, but it does not support other language, especially east asian languange. That make it seems not good, and the worse thing is that it needs to buy.

Here is the download site, you will find it is great.

Download site 1; Download site 2; Download site 3

First you need install Microsoft® .NET Framework 1.1
Download: Microsoft® .NET Framework 1.1

Blog Visitors Jump 31% in 2005

Google takes first place in Nielsen/NetRatings ranking of blogs. August 16, 2005
Blog readership has risen dramatically this year as the number and reputation of blogs spread, with unique visitors to the top 50 blog-related sites up 31 percent in the first seven months of the year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

By July 2005, blogs boasted 29.3 million unique visitors, amounting to 20 percent of active U.S. Internet users, the survey said Monday.

Blog hosting sites, which have spawned millions of blogs, play a key role in the spike in current blog readership. Blog host sites require very little technological knowledge from bloggers and their readers.

MSN Spaces, which came out in beta last December, has grown 947 percent since January, with an audience of 3.3 million in June. It officially launched in April. The MSN Spaces site ranked No. 5 in visitors in July, with 3.3 million.

But No. 1 is Google’s blogger, with 12.6 million visitors. That was nearly double No. 2 Xanga’s 6.9 million.
Filling out the top five were two Six Apart products: Live Journal at No. 3 and TypePad at No. 4, with 5.4 million and 4.6 million visitors, respectively.

The lower half of the top 10 was filled by individual and group blogs, rather than blog hosts: The Drudge Report, The Smoking Gun, Free Republic, The Huffington Post, and Fark.

Ranking Controversy
As blogs become more popular, the process of ranking them becomes more controversial, especially for some of their authors. Last week’s blog readership numbers from comScore Networks showed a different story, with blogs at different spots in the rankings. comScore’s numbers stemmed from an earlier and longer time period (see Blog Readers Up 45% in Q1).

ComScore’s numbers were hotly contested, especially by Jason Calacanis of Weblogs, whose popular Engadget landed at No. 24. In the Nielsen/NetRating data, Engadget is No. 11, with 787,000 visitors in July.

The blogging community has struggled in recent months with the idea of top blogs and how they should be determined. The Technorati 100, which also measures blogs by links, has been heavily criticized for being infrequently updated, including sites that are not blogs, and reinforcing the so-called "A-list" of bloggers rather than reflecting the changing demographics of blogs and their readers.

On Tuesday, blog search company Feedster debuted its Top 500 blog list, which bases its ranking on number of inbound links and freshness of content. The first month’s ranking has Engadget in first place, followed by deviantArt, Boing Boing, Albino Blacksheep, and Daily Kos.

Mr. Calacanis, one of Technorati’s most vocal critics, was quick to write on his blog, “The Feedster 500 is out… and it’s amazing!”

RSS Mess
While blog visitors are sometimes perceived to be a tech-savvy bunch, Nielsen/NetRatings said 66 percent of that group do not know what RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is. RSS, a tool for consolidating new information from web sites, has been the subject of much development and discussion.

Yet just 11.3 percent say they use RSS feeds, which can vastly simplify the process of visiting multiple sites. Half of those surveyed by Nielsen/NetRatings had never heard of RSS and 15.7 percent said they had heard of RSS but didn’t know what it does.

Some have suggested that RSS is too opaque a term. Microsoft, while assuring techies that it understands the value of RSS (see Behind Microsoft’s RSS Move), has used a more generic word to describe its syndication technology: “web feeds” (see: Redmond Ignites an RSS Fury).

Bloglines, NewsGator, and Google News also use the term “feeds,” giving non-techies a clearer idea of what they’re getting.

Redmond Ignites an RSS Fury

Microsoft refers to RSS as “web feeds,” sparking a controversy over its intentions.August 16, 2005
Microsoft’s decision to rename RSS as “web feeds” in the next version of its Internet Explorer browser has some influential bloggers accusing the software company of trying to reinvent web syndication technology and claim it for itself.

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a tool that allows subscribers to keep track of new content that is added to a site by using an aggregator. RSS has become an extremely popular tool after an increasing number of news sites and bloggers have added the functionality to their sites.

Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon by offering RSS aggregation through its upcoming version of Internet Explorer, which is currently in the beta stage. The Redmond giant decided to refer to the RSS feeds as “web feeds,” doing away with any mention of the word RSS throughout the product.

Feeding Frenzy
Once noticed, this sparked a debate. Dave Winer, a rather influential blogger, was among the first to post a note about it on his widely read blog, Scripting News. Mr. Winer is one of the pioneers of RSS. His company, UserLand, ran one of the first web aggregators, My.UserLand.com, which allowed users to follow numerous blogs from a single web page using RSS.
In his blog, Mr. Winer also criticized Google’s decision to call its RSS content “feeds.”

"Like it or not Microsoft, the technology is called RSS. If you try to change that, for whatever reason, you will get routed around," wrote Mr. Winer in his blog. "Like it or not Google, the format is RSS 2.0. ... Go all the way, and just give it up, and accept the gift, the way it was presented, without trying to edit, revise, fold, spindle, or mutilate."

Other bloggers like Richard MacManus, whose blog Read/Write Web, have supported Mr. Winer’s stand but with a cautionary note. Mr. MacManus wrote that Microsoft and Google should not mess with the brand because "it's bigger than both of them."

“But that doesn't mean they won't succeed in turning the brand into 'feeds,' because as the two biggest Internet companies around—obviously they hold a lot of sway,” said Mr. MacManus.

Tempest in a Teacup?
Microsoft has tried to defend its decision in the blogosphere, the online world of blogs. Mike Torres, MSN Spaces lead program manager, responded that not just Microsoft but many other companies too have chucked the name “RSS” in favor of their own nomenclature.

For instance, Firefox has “Live Bookmarks” on its browser, which is basically aggregation of RSS feeds into the browser. Bloglines, a web-based news aggregator, uses the term “feeds” throughout its site without really mentioning RSS anywhere.
“Looks like millions upon millions of people are using RSS, the technology, but not RSS, the brand,” wrote Mr. Torres.

Technology analysts said that the issue of rebranding of RSS is a tempest in a teacup. They noted that the name RSS has itself evolved over the years.

In 1999, RSS was called RDF Site Summary, and the first to use it was Netscape in its "My Netscape" portal. Later, the name was changed to Rich Site Summary which finally evolved into its current name of Really Simple Syndication. “Another change would be consistent with RSS's evolution,” said Joe Wilcox, senior analyst at JupiterResearch.

Mr. Wilcox cited the example of HTML, where most people use the term "web pages" rather than HTML. RSS, he said, will go the same way.

“If RSS proliferates the way Microsoft envisions, it will largely become invisible the way HTML is today—used by many applications and in ways not necessarily obvious to the users,” said Mr. Wilcox. “The existing term would likely become meaningless anyway.”

Behind Microsoft’s RSS Move

Redmond puts a giant’s weight behind the rapidly growing technology of RSS.
June 27, 2005

Microsoft’s decision to build RSS technology into the upcoming Longhorn version of Windows and Internet Explorer 7 was greeted positively Monday by those already working with the fast-growing technology.

The RSS (really simple syndication) functionality in Longhorn is designed to make it easier for end users to discover and subscribe to RSS feeds, and for developers to incorporate RSS capabilities into applications. In addition, Microsoft announced Simple List Extensions to enable web sites to publish lists, such as photo albums, music playlists, and top 10 lists, as RSS feeds.

RSS technology has been rapidly adopted by web publishers and bloggers as a way of keeping readers apprised of the latest news, blog postings, and podcasts on their sites. Microsoft’s support for the standard gives the technology added legitimacy and offers the company a new way to attract the rapidly expanding RSS audience to its own sites.

Support for RSS within the next version of Internet Explorer will also help the browser catch up with Mozilla Firefox, which already natively supports RSS.

“The RSS functionality in Longhorn will enable developers to take advantage of underlying capabilities and tools, such as a common RSS feed list and common RSS feed store, to easily create a broad range of innovative applications for end users,” said a Microsoft spokesperson.

The company’s announcement at the Gnomedex conference in Seattle last Friday that it intends to support RSS took some participants by surprise. However, RSS has been gaining more proponents, with Audible.com also announcing Friday that it is beginning to offer audio content via RSS, and Attensa announcing a new RSS network and servers.

While some RSS devotees see Microsoft’s efforts as another way for the Redmond software giant to stake its claim in their territory, some RSS developers welcomed Microsoft’s acceptance of the technology.

“A bunch of people have asked if we see this as a huge threat to our business, and on the surface it may seem that way, but anything Microsoft does to further the adoption and awareness of RSS is a good thing for us,” said Greg Reinacker, chief technology officer of RSS platform provider NewsGator. “By building it into IE 7, it gives people an idea of what it’s about.”

RSS developers had been following news of Microsoft involvement in RSS via occasional postings on the blog of RSS 2.0 specification developer Dave Winer of UserLand. He reported last week that he was contacted by Robert Scoble of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team back in March for his input and soon learned that Microsoft also had an in-house RSS team.

Mr. Reinacker added that NewsGator also benefited when Yahoo added RSS technology to My Yahoo because it increased awareness of RSS and prompted users to look for software like NewsGator’s that added extra functionality. NewsGator also offers RSS clients that run on Microsoft Outlook, mobile devices, and Windows Media Center television sets.

He dismissed suggestions that RSS support could divert Microsoft from its commitment to XML. “RSS is XML,” he said. “It’s a dialect of XML and an RSS feed is actually an XML document.”

He believes RSS’s rapidly growing popularity explains why Microsoft would take an interest.

Explosive Interest

“The whole RSS space is just exploding right now on the client side and on the publisher’s side with tools like we have now,” said Mr. Reinacker. “Two and a half years ago people were asking, ‘What’s RSS and why should I care?’ Now every publisher knows what RSS is all about. It’s a natural for Microsoft to want to build it into their platform.”

Microsoft hopes to extend RSS with Simple List Extensions to address the problem faced by content publishers when managing feeds that represent lists of items that are ordered and periodically changing.

To make these extensions available, Microsoft is offering what it calls a Creative Commons license.

“We’ve heard from our customers and the community that RSS is important and increasing in popularity,” said the Microsoft spokesperson. “Microsoft believes that RSS changes the dynamic of the Internet from simply browsing and searching to subscribing—the new way of consuming information on the web.”

Microsoft also says it shares similar goals with other RSS providers, even those with whom it will be competing.

“RSS in Longhorn is about ensuring that our customers get the functionality they’ve asked for,” said the spokesperson. “Microsoft welcomes competition because it drives innovation which benefits customers. Ultimately, we have a shared goal with other RSS providers in that we want to increase the adoption of RSS by users and developers.”