The Basics of RSS

• What is RSS?

• Using Mozilla Firefox Live Bookmarks

• How to Manually Create a Feed

• Where to Find RSS Feeds

• RSS Resources

What is RSS?

• Really Rich Syndication• Really Simple Syndication • RDF Site Summary

• A simple, fast way to feed news and headlines to a user’s desktop

• Faster than clicking from web site to web site, or opening multiple emails

How to Recognize RSS

Numerous websites offer RSS feeds:

• New York Times, USA Today, etc.

• Science, Nature, etc.

• Just Look for the bright orange XML or RSS icon

USA Today RSS Feeds

RSS icon in URL window

Underlying XML code

• <item>• <title>• Entangled Humpback Whale Rescued in Hawaiian Waters• </title>• <link>http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2581.htm</link>• <description>• Federal and state officials, along with local volunteers, teamed up to free a humpback

whale from a life-threatening entanglement Monday. Members of the NOAA Fisheries Service and Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, and Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, along with the community-based Whale Disentanglement Network unraveled lines dragging 25 feet from the whale's mouth and freed the humpback whale, which was located off the north side of the island of Lana'i on Feb. 13. The whale was entangled in 5/8 inches and 3/4 inches diameter lines coming from the left side of its mouth. Two large red buoys and a smaller bullet buoy were part of the gear dragging from the whale, threatening the health of the animal.

• </description>• <category>RSS News</category>• <guid isPermaLink="false">{79ed9be1-49b2-bfe0-c383-7784f1828f40}</guid>• <pubDate>Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:53:17 GMT</pubDate>• </item>

Item elementTitle element Link

element

Description element

Subscribe to a News Feed Using Mozilla Live Bookmarks

• Your bookmarks can be live news feeds from newspapers, blogs, websites, libraries, etc.

• You only need one tool – Mozilla Firefox Browser

Mozilla Live Bookmarks pagehttp://www.mozilla.com/firefox/livebookmarks.html

Add A Feed to Live Bookmarks

• Open up Mozilla Firefox• On toolbar, choose Bookmarks>Manage

Bookmarks• Your list of bookmarks appears on left-hand

side of the bookmarks manager page

Add A Feed to Live Bookmarks

Next, find a Web page with an XML or RSS icon

1. Click on XML icon

2. Highlight the URL for the feed

3. Go to Bookmark Manager

4. Click on File > New Live Bookmark

5. Copy the URL for the feed from the web site

Here’s Your New Feed!

• From the Browser Toolbar

• Go to Bookmarks

• Click Manage Bookmarks

• New feed appears in list of Bookmarks

• Highlight the new feed and the headlines appear to the right

• Click on a headline to get the full story

• Beauty of live bookmarks is you choose which headline to read when you want to read it.

• Danger is you could spend all day monitoring the news!

Add A Feed to Live Bookmarks

Second Easy Way

1. Click RSS icon in browser window

2. Dialog Box appears: “Add Live Bookmark”

3. Choose where to file new live bookmark

4. I set up a folder in My Bookmarks titled Live bookmarks

Add a Feed to Live Bookmarks

Third Easy Way:

1. Open up Mozilla Firefox

2. On the Browser Toolbar click on Bookmarks

3. Click on Manage Bookmarks

4. Click on File > New Live Bookmark

5. Dialog Box appears

6. Enter URL of the feed

7. Click OK and voila-

8. Your feed appears in Bookmarks list!

• A cool extension to

Mozilla Firefox – adds nice style to your news feeds

• Help getting started – Sage Wiki community at:

• http://sage.wikicities.com/wiki/Getting_Started

Sage extension

Syndicate Your Content:create an RSS Feed

First section:• <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso=8859-1"?>• <rss version="2.0">• <channel>

Second section: contains main news item:• <item>• <title></title>• <link></link>• <description></description>• <pubDate></pubDate>• </item>

Third section: closes the xml file• </channel>• </rss>

Where to Find RSS Feeds

• NOAA -http://www.lib.noaa.gov/docs/news/rss.html

• Other Federal Agencies –Firstgov.gov- U.S. Government RSS Library

• Newspapers, Magazines and Journals• Blogs – Bloglines.com• Libraries – customized feeds for special areas of

interest, new books, current articles• RSS Search Engines

RSS Resources

• SearchEngineWatch – “Making an RSS Feed” http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2175271

• MyYahoo - add news feeds

• Webcontent.gov/webcontent/technology/rss.shtml

• RSS 2.0 Specs from Harvard Law Berkman Center - http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss

• Explanation of RSS from Storm Predictoin Center: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/aboutrss.html

• Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom By Ben Hammersley (O’Reilly)• What Are Syndication Feeds By Shelley Powers (O’Reilly)

• Mary.Lou.Cumberpatch@noaa.gov, 301-713-2600 ext. 129