So, as soon as our feeds are re-cached and re-crawled by RSS, we’ll throw up our latest podcast for today and get the show on the road. In the mean time, we apologize if for some reason your shows start re-downloading as we’re retooling our feeds. Thanks for listening, everybody…. Source: Engadget

RSS integration has already pretty much become a must-have feature for a whole host of products. Not having RSS integration is almost like not being able to use the Web at all.
And I can see why many developers and businesses are flocking to support RSS. In addition to their popularity as the delivery method of choice for core Web 2.0 products, such as blogs and podcasting, RSS feeds have great potential for reliably delivering a wide assortment of content, files and even applications…. Source: eWeek

Publishers of RSS feeds: please, please, please let me read your content. Stop creating hurdles for your readers. One of the biggest mistakes I’m seeing today is the amount of content provided (or the lack thereof) in RSS feeds. I understand the argument against putting full content into feeds. I understand publishers want to drive readers to their website as that’s where the money is made. But if a publisher is going to provide just the summary content, at least give me enough to know what the post is about. It’s incredibly annoying to have to click on every single feed item just to get an idea of what the post’s subject. One of the biggest benefits for a subscriber of RSS feeds is how much time they can save. Time savings with RSS is gained by allowing the subscriber to only read what they want when they want. If I have to to skim every single webpage this defeats this purpose of feeds. Titles almost never tell enough, so I need a summary. I’m sure I’m not alone in this complaint. If you only subscribe to a few feeds, this may not seem like an issue but when you have hundreds of feeds this becomes a big nuisance…. Source: tmarkiewicz.com

I can’t hold it in any more…

I’ve battled it out with Dave Winer, that’s well documented.

However, deep down inside I always knew that he’s a really a good guy and that he’s brilliant on many levels. I’ve spent more and more time one-on-one, or in small groups, with Dave over the past year and I’ve grown more and more fond of his brutal honesty, insights, and sensitivity. That last part is key, he’s a sensitive guy. People are constantly hitting him up and getting very personal with him. One time I was at an event (Gnomdex), and this guy interrupts a conversation the two of us were having and gets within three inches of Dave’s face and he starts to really give it to Dave. The guy is busy telling Dave what he thinks and what he needs to do. It was really aggressive and obnoxious, and Dave had to ask the guy to step back and we both had to explain to him that he was barging in on the discussion. I realized that’s Dave’s life a large part of the time. Folks just getting up in his face and he doesn’t like–he’s a sensitive guy. Of course, Dave doesn’t have a filter and he calls b.s. by default–that’s his DNA. It’s what’s great about him, but it’s also created this massive stand off where Dave is hitting Tim O’Reilly up every day on his blog…. Source: calacanis.com

The uptake of Windows Live Writer can be seen not only by the number of plugins that spring up for itself but also by the plugins that make it usable in other applications.
The Firefox extension Blog It with Windows Live Writer was one of the first to enable the Blog This functionality Internet Explorer users with the Windows Live Toolbar can enjoy out of the box.
And now comes Blog This for RSS Bandit.
RSS Bandit is a popular feed reader (what are feeds?) which by default can Blog This with w.bloggar (a desktop blogging client) and post to del.icio.us…. Source: Windows Live Writer Plugins

Would more people subscribe to RSS feeds and podcasts if they were easier to capture and manage?

That’s the perception of Marc Mercuri, an architect evangelist on the Microsoft developer and platform evangelism team, who has developed in his free time an information-aggregator he has coined Information Center, or InfoCenter.

Carl Franklin, the CEO of Pwop Productions, who has had a chance to see the product, described InfoCenter as “an RSS aggregator/podcast-enclosure downloader on steroids.”

Mercuri showed off a prototype of InfoCenter to a handful of individuals at Microsoft’s TechEd conference in June. In July, he unveiled InfoCenter to a broader group, via the “.Net Rocks” radio show. Mercuri is expecting to release for download the latest InfoCenter bits, complete with a newly redesigned interface, around August 9.

When asked whether he had discussed with any division at Microsoft the possibility of InfoCenter becoming a Microsoft-branded ware, Mercuri said that “there have been absolutely no talks about this becoming a product…. Source: Microsoft Watch

LAS VEGAS–Reading blogs via popular RSS or Atom feeds may expose computer users to hacker attacks, a security expert warns.

Attackers could insert malicious JavaScript in content that is transferred to subscribers of data feeds that use the popular RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or Atom formats, Bob Auger, a security engineer with Web security company SPI Dynamics, said Thursday in a presentation at the Black Hat security event here.

The problem doesn’t affect only blogs–any kind of information feed using any kind of format could potentially be used to transmit malicious content to a subscriber, Auger said. People, for example, subscribe to mailing lists and news Web sites via RSS, he said, noting “this is about the entire concept of Web feeds.”

SPI Dynamics examined a number of online and offline applications used to read RSS and Atom feeds. In many cases, any JavaScript code delivered on the feed would run on the user’s PC, meaning it could be vulnerable to attack, Auger said. JavaScript is a scripting language that experts say is increasingly causing security concerns. … Source: News.com

The Nabaztag Smart Rabbit wants to multiply in the U.S.

The new device, introduced in June to the U.S. market, uses a Wi-Fi connection and text-to-speech software to read things like RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, e-mails and weather reports out loud.

The creator of the plastic rabbit, Violet, seems to have taken the idea of the Ambient Orb and run with it. Instead of just changing colors in relation to the data fed into it, as the Orb does, the Nabaztag rabbit actually talks to you, becoming a verbal companion to your personalized Internet.

“We started three years ago…with a Wi-Fi lamp, but people seemed more interested in verbal information,” Olivier Mével, co-founder of Violet, said in an interview. “It meant for us this new kind of object connected to the Internet–not only an object that could display information, but also objects used to communicate with SMS (Short Message Service), phone and chat. It was also an emotional messenger. You can send love messages or whatever to whomever you want.”… Source: CNET

The following RSS Advisory Board proposal has been made by Rogers Cadenhead and seconded by Matthew Bookspan and Greg Smith.

Under the advisory board charter, the board has seven days to vote on it. Interested parties can comment on the proposal on the mailing list RSS-Public.
Proposal

The current RSS specification contains two minor issues I’d like to resolve.

1. The docs element refers to an outdated URL for the specification instead of the current URL.

For as long as the board operates, http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specificatio… will be the permanent URL of the current version of the spec. The domain name is the property of the board, so it can move to a new host as needed in the future…. Source: rssboard.org

FeedBurner, which powers hundreds of thousands of blog, podcast and mainstream news feeds (including this one), is apparently being blocked by Chinese authorities. Here is a Yoda-esque loose English language translation of William Long’s original post. William even used a proxy server to verify that the issue is with the Chinese, not FeedBurner. His subscriber count dropped from over a thousand readers to zero overnight.

I have nothing but respect for Dick Costolo and the FeedBurner crew. They have been extremely helpful in troubleshooting various issues on my blog and others. I am sure they are doing everything in their power to remedy as best they can. This issue goes way beyond FeedbBurner…. Source: Micro Persuasion

It’s a Flickr requirement that your photos must be made PUBLIC. To return a PDF based on a Flickr Newsfeed, enter information for a particular user on Flickr (such as yourself) AND / OR optionally enter Tags separated by commas.

You can also leave the user fields blank and just enter keyword(s) in the Tag field to create a PDF from popular Flickr Tags !

The resulting PDFs are limited to 10 photos because the Flickr Newsfeeds themselves contain only ten photos. You can also visit any webpage on Flickr.com offering a Newsfeed and use one of our RSS2PDF Bookmarklets…. Source: RSS 2 PDF

Video podcast support is coming to the PlayStation Portable (PSP) thanks to a firmware update Sony Computer Entertainment has published.

The update takes the PSP firmware to version 2.8. It allows the PSP to receive video clips through RSS (really simple syndication) feeds from blogs and other websites. Sony first added RSS and podcast support in November 2005 and expanded it in April this year.

Additionally the firmware update adds compatibility for the “.3gp” audio format used by some mobile phones, and greater access to content stored on Memory Stick memory cards…. Source: MacWorld

Long-time readers will know all about my long-time admiration for UBC’s librarians. Yesterday was a notable new chapter in the saga, as 35 of our university’s finest information specialists (with more on a waiting list) packed into a lab for a three hour workshop on RSS and academic libraries.

Much of the time was spent on the basics, though about half the attendees had at least set up a newsreader already. But the preparation for the more advanced and context-specific elements unearthed some useful and powerful resources that I thought I would pass on…

Electronic Journals and RSS - Librarians at my old school in Saskatchewan maintain a couple of valuable lists — electronic journals with an RSS feed and publishers and sources for academic RSS. The number of Table of Content updates through this means is still too small, but blogging librarians such as Steven Cohen are keeping up the pressure for more… I was pleasantly surprised to learn that ProQuest has begun to offer this service…. Source: Abject Learning

In the past few weeks, I’ve gotten several fresh calls, four in fact (some out of the blue, some from people I know well) about RSS, aggregation, and copyright issues. I think the matter continues to have traction and importance. Two follow-ups:

- I never managed, somehow, to see a very fine reply from Nathan Yergler to a post of my own a few months ago. I had proposed a series of 5 licenses specific to syndicated online sources. (I understand that Nathan works for CC in a technical job but was not writing as a CC employee.) His sense is that there is a need for more explicit licensing of citizen-generated content, but that CC licenses (and other things, like full copyright and the public domain) already cover the five variants that I had in mind. It’s a nice argument. I have to think about whether I agree in full — there are reasons why CC Attribution 2.5 may not get the job done in full for all users, say — but if he’s right, then we’d need no new licenses, but just a campaign to get people to know about the options and to use them in ways that reflect their desires related to aggregation and re-use of their content. (Apologies, Nathan, that I’m just getting to reply now, but I managed to miss it the first time; it was a strong argument.)…. Source: blogs.law.harvard.edu

My last post shared some of our conceptual designs of the feed icon and expressed some of the criteria that we are using to select the right icon. Several of the comments liked icon #4 simply because it looked liked the Firefox icon, and many (like this one) suggested that we work with the Firefox team to standardize on an icon.

This seemed like a very good idea, so in November, Amar and I took a visit down to Silicon Valley to meet with John Lilly and Chris Beard from Mozilla to get their thoughts on it. We all agreed that it’s in the user’s best interest to have one common icon to represent RSS and RSS-related features in a browser. And the winner is… [Source: Microsoft Team RSS Blog]

I’ve added a new link to the template (upper right) that lets you send me a voice mail. All you need is a microphone on your pc and the standard flash plug-in for your browser.
The service is provided through Odeo.When you leave a message I’ll get an email that lets me know there is new audio in my Odeo account and I can go retrieve it. Or I can subscribe to my Odeo in-box via RSS and find it that way.
If you are interested in this for your blog/website go to: Get you own voice mail on Odeo and they will walk you through what you need to do. Source: Scott Kingery/Tech.Life.Blogged