| Syndication of Media has to date
been limited to text and static image RSS Feeds. As standards
evolve for rich media RSS, we look at basic RSS, Atom, BitTorrent
and VMCasting.
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently
updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.
Users of RSS content use programs called feed readers or
aggregators. Users subscribe to a feed by uploading to their
reader a link to the feed. This is done with a single click
on the feed symbol or link. Content is automatically updated
in the feed.
The initials "RSS" are variously used to refer
to the following standards:
- Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
- Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
- RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
- RSS formats are specified in XML (a generic specification
for data formats). RSS delivers its information as an XML
file called an "RSS feed", "webfeed",
"RSS stream", or "RSS channel".
Feed Readers
Programs known as feed readers or aggregators check a subscription
llist of feeds on behalf of a user. It then displays any updated
articles that they find. It is common to find web feeds on
major websites and many smaller ones. Some websites let people
choose between RSS or Atom formatted web feeds; others offer
only RSS or only
Atom.
Client Side Newsreaders
RSS-aware programs are available for various operating systems.
Client-side readers and aggregators are typically constructed
as standalone programs or extensions to existing programs
such as web browsers and Email readers. Many browsers have
integrated support for RSS feeds. There also are other applications
that can convert an RSS feed into several usenet articles,
viewable through the major newsreader software such as
Mozilla Thunderbird or Forté
Agent.
Web Based Newsreaders
Web-based feed readers and news aggregators such as NewsGator
Online require no software installation and make the user's
"feeds" available on any computer with Web access.
Some aggregators combine existing web feeds into new feeds,
e.g., taking all football related items from several sports
feeds and providing a new football feed. There are also search
engines for content published via web feeds like Bloglines.
Feed Representation
On Web pages, web feeds (RSS or Atom) are typically linked
with the word "Subscribe", an orange square, or
a rectangle with the letters RSS or XML
. Many news aggregators such as My Yahoo! publish subscription
buttons for use on Web pages to simplify the process of adding
news feeds.
Atom
In reaction to recognized issues with RSS a new syndication
specification, Atom, was launched in June 2003. Later adopted
by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), leading to
the publication of a specification (RFC 4287) Atom Publishing
Protocol is now accepted as a standards-based protocol for
posting to publishing tools.
Atom claims it improves on RSS by relying on standard XML
features, by specifying a payload container that can handle
many different kinds of content unambiguously, and by having
a specification maintained by a recognized standards organization.
Critics claim that Atom unnecessarily introduces a third branch
of syndication specifications, further confusing the marketplace.
For
a comparison of Atom 1.0 to RSS 2.0 see Atom Compared to RSS
2.0.
Bit Torrent And RSS
The peer-to-peer application BitTorrent now supports RSS.
Bit Torrent RSS feeds [Torrent/RSS-es] allow client applications
to download files automatically [Broadcatching]. Most common
BitTorrent clients already offer RSS support.
VMCasting
VMcasting
is an automatic virtual machine deployment mechanism based
on RSS2.0 whereby virtual machine images are transferred from
a server to a client securely delivering files containing
a technical specification and virtual disk image. VMcasting
is used by several virtual server management applications
including Enomalism.
Building An RSS
Feed
This information has been extracted and edited
from Wikipedia under GNU
Licence. |
