Cybersurf

You might have noticed while surfing some sites, particularly news sites, that there is very often a discreet button somewhere on the front page that says something like “RSS version” – “RSS feed” or “ download news to your site”

What is all this about? And what is RSS – more internet jargon? Yes, of course it is, and nobody is completely sure what the letters stand for. Here are some options for RSS –

"Rich Site Summary” - "Really Simple Syndication" or how about “RDF Site Summary."

To complicate matters a little further, there are also up to seven different technical standards that describe themselves as RSS.

But that is the bad news over. Here comes the good stuff.

RSS is a way of syndicating articles to as many other sites that wish to use them.

Still confusing? OK Let’s try to illustrate this with an example. The BBC has several RSS feeds – one for each of its main categories. Now if I have a science web site, I can put the BBC’s RSS feed for science and nature on my web site.

What happens is that I will be putting the BBC’s headlines on my site. If someone wants to read the story associated with the headline – they click on that headline and they are automatically taken to the relevant story on the BBC’s site.

It becomes a symbiotic relationship – I get free BBC headlines on my site and the BBC gets traffic directed to their site from the headline. We all benefit.

But RSS feeds are also useful even if you don’t want to put it onto another web site. You can put various feeds onto a single page for your own information.

Let’s say you are interested in Science, well then you can go to the BBC’s Science feed, then to the New Scientist, Associated press also has a science sections and many others. If ou put all of these feeds together, you will never, ever miss a science story.

How do you collect all the different RSS feeds? I know of two ways – I am sure there are others.

First you need to download a feed aggregator – it is a piece of software that aggregates – collects different feeds. There are several aggregators, almost all of them are free. I have come across - FeedDemon; Rocket ; and a feed reader called feedreader and the one I have installed at my computer in the office – called Sage.

I have not tested the others – but I have heard good things about Rocket – and I am happy with Sage.

On my home computer, I have finally set-up the Thunderbird e-mail client – yes, at home I no longer use Outlook – and Thunderbird has a built in RSS reader- which means that I can read at least the news headlines as if they were e-mail subject lines. To be honest, it still is a little weird reading news on an e-mail client, but maybe I’ll get used to it.

Before we wrap up today’s Cybersurf, let me remind you that you can read this script on the Cybersurf Blog which you will find at www.cybersurf.blogspot.com …. One more time, www.cybersurf.blogspot.com – and incidentally – you can get the Cybersurf blog on an RSS feed too.

For a little extra value, I will add links of sites where you can download an RSS aggregator.

Thanks for listening and remember to keeeeep on surfin.

LINKS:

Try this powerful, easy-to-use RSS news reader for Windows
www.bradsoft.com - RSS News Feeds
Easily Create News Feeds. Real Time Tracking. Try it now.
www.nooked.com Rocket RSS Reader - Free
Read Search Subscribe Track Create Easy to Use, No Download, Fast!
www.rocketinfo.com Free RSS Reader

RSS Feed reader directory

// posted by Steven Lang @ 8:29 am 0 comments

You heard right – that was an official warning. Be prepared to have your socks blown off – that is if you haven’t heard of podcasting before.

Podcasting derives its name from the Apple I-Pod – but you do NOT need to have an I-pod – or even anything vaguely like the device to get hooked on podcasting.

What is podcasting?

Well, it is sort of like blogging except in an audio format. People record their thoughts and ideas, put them on the Internet and then other people listen to them.

It could also be called something like home-made radio. For example, listen to these two Brads with their weekly fishing show called “Why Fish?”

INSERT – Why Fish 26” (www.why-fish.com)

Yes, you certainly are the Brads.

You can listen to the podcasts on your computer or you can download them to your I-pod, or any MP3 player and listen to homemade radio on the road, in a plane or on the train.

How about this DJ wannabe on a site called Dorktones – I kid you not – Dorktones:

INSERT – Dorktones 18”

One of the best known Podcasts is called “Grape Radio” and it is all about wine. Essentially three guys sit around, drink and talk about wine.

And then there are some really freaky people like this one who calls himself Bob Narley.

INSERT: Bob Narley 13” (http://bobnarley.com)

If Cybersurf has at all stimulated your interest in podcasting, you can get the necessary software at ipodder.org

And if you would like to find out more about podcasting you should go to podcastbunker.com – a site that reviews podcasts, ranks and links to them.

So before we wrap the program for today, let’s hear one more for the super geeks.

INSERT: RFC 25” (Radio Free - RFC)

If you would like more information on podcasting, or would like to review some of the sites mentioned today – please go to the cybersurf blog which you can find at Cybersurf dot blogspot dot com. One more time – Cybersurf.blogspot.com

And that is a wrap for the Podcasting edtion of Cybersurf, thank-you for listening, please tune in again next week and remember to keep on surfing.

// posted by Steven Lang @ 9:04 am 0 comments

The reason is quite simple really – I was in Accra because that is where an Africa regional conference was held to prepare for a world summit on the information society which is due to be held in Tunis in November.

Since it was all about information technologies, I feel I can safely link to it in this program.

I went to Accra as part of the Highway Africa News Agency. Our team, with members from Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, the Seychelles and of course South Africa – was charged with putting together the daily conference newspaper.

The Highway Africa News Agency – or HANA for short – was formed with the specific purpose of covering large information technology events and then distributing the news articles – free of charge - to any African news organisation that would not ordinarily be able to afford such coverage.

HANA has been operating successfully as an ad-hoc, IT event, news agency – and it was on this basis that HANA was invited to produce the daily newspaper at the preparatory meeting in Accra.

Now, I will admit that I was very nervous about producing the newspaper – it was called WSIS Africa Agenda – the WSIS being an acronym for the World Summit on the Information Society.

I was worried that our journalists might not understand the somewhat complicated concepts, or that we might put out some glaring inaccuracies.

You might think my worries are little melodramatic, after all, it is only a small conference paper - regular newspapers put out hundreds of pages every day and they don’t get all nervous – but the real difference is that when you produce a conference paper you do so in a small, closed environment, where the stakes are high and egos are rampant. The delegates you write about, are the same people you bump into in the corridors of the conference centre

– they know where you are – in the newsroom

However I was not quite prepared for the only type of criticism we did get – and it had nothing to do with missing any of the issues or misrepresenting the facts.

But had everything to do with egos.

On several occasions we had minor officials come storming into the newsroom expressing their concerns because he had not paid homage to their respective bosses.

One said the matter was very urgent, while another expressed her extreme disappointment because the paper did not carry a picture of his or her boss.

Nevertheless, the conference did allow me to get a glimpse of a rather vibrant IT sector in Ghana – where private enterprise is booming, but unfortunately the officialdom is still dragging down the pace of progress.

And after that extremely interesting foray into West Africa –

Gee it’s great to be back home.

That’s it for today, thanks for listening and remember to keeeeep on surfing.

// posted by Steven Lang @ 1:00 pm 0 comments