Dizzysoft Software

Recently I’ve found myself consumed by the whole concept of RSS (Really Simple Syndication). This is a conduit by which information can be conveyed. Because of its flexibility, there are numerous ways to send information to and retrieve information from an RSS feed (like those on this website).

In my awe of RSS, I am opening up a new category on this website that will highlight the many uses, means of input and output, and other items of interest about RSS- many of which can be done with existing web-based services for free without any programming.

Much of this information I have gotten from the 3spots blog. I hope to go through these ideas, weed out the old or obsolete or useless entries, and comment on the usefulones.

Maybe, then, you’ll join me in my excitement over this great new vehicle for communication.

Start by scraping information from a website into an RSS feed by using the RSS Generator. This site goes to a given web page and searches for a part of that web page using a regular expression. Using this site defeats my goal of giving examples of how to do things with existing RSS services that involve no programming because it uses the difficult concept of regular expressions- you can tell how difficult this is by the fact that this site’s own example doesn’t work. You might find sites like regular-expressions.info useful as you figure this one out. This is, of course, after you view the page in HTML in order to learn what you are searching for.

Using this service I created a feed that keeps track of the current NCAA Basketball polls. I did this by giving the RSS Generator the Yahoo! Sports page for rankings and told it to use all circumstances of table rows (since the lists are formatted in tables).

Next give the RSS feed to one of the many services that create an embeddable object for your website. There are many available, but many of them did not like the feed created by the RSS Generator. This is why I went to a couple validation services and see if anything might be wrong. The Feed Validator says that, “This feed is valid, but interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations…” Apparently some of the services I was working could not overcome this issue.

The best site I could find to produce an object that I could embed on a web page is the FeedJumbler. It not only converts the feed into different formats, but produces HTML versions of the feed and a JavaScript function you can add in your webpage codes. Since this data can change, it is probably best to insert the JavaScript function on your webpage (just copy and paste it where you want it) and you will always have the latest information on your website.

Please give credit where credit is due. Be sure to tell people where you got the information you post, and give credit to the tools you used to post it on your site.

Earlier this year Church Marketing Sucks generated a list of how a church could use RSS feeds. Here are some of their suggestions.

• Announce Events
• Announce Prayer Requests
• Send Out Devotions
• Weekly News Updates
• Series Announcements
• Encouraging Messages

This is a great idea, but where do you get an RSS feed?

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Church Marketing Sucks generated a list of how a church could use RSS feeds, including:

• Announce Events
• Announce Prayer Requests
• Send Out Devotions
• Weekly News Updates
• Series Announcements
• Encouraging Messages

In my last article I talked about how to use existing programs to create your RSS feeds. Now, how do you get the message out?

There are many ways RSS can communicate its message beyond the feed reader. Many of these ways are free using already existing programs (requiring no programing by anyone in the church).

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Because mailing lists are so handy they have been around for a while now. There’s a very simple way of creating your own mailing list without purchasing any special software or programming yourself- simply using some pre-existing RSS tools.

There are a couple services that offer e-mail to RSS feed creation. The best one I’ve found is MailBucket. All you have to do to use this is set up your feed, and it will give you the e-mail address to send it to. This one is good because it includes an anti-spam feature that would otherwise make this whole process worthless because it could be overloaded with spam.

Of course, you can receive the RSS feed in any way you want, but the purpose of this article is to describe the creation of a mailing list. This is where the second step begins. By using a pre-existing RSS to e-mail program you give it your feed and let it send the content by e-mail to whoever wants to receive it. One such service is Blog Alert. What makes this service nice is that it will create a widget you can add to your website to promote your mailing list.

If you subscribe to my RSS feed you will get more helpful articles like this one.

Blogging and RSS have had a wonderful relationship for quite a while. RSS feeds have been the primary vehicle of distributing the content of a blog and even have helped search engines index its content. The relationship does not have to end there, however. RSS is too useful just to passively communicate to people who are interested in your topics. You can use RSS to increase interest (and traffic) to your blog.

One of the common ways of increasing traffic to your blog is by engaging other bloggers. Find people who are interested in the same or similar topics to you and engage in their conversation. This not only gets your name out in the blogosphere, but will create interest in your unique contribution. How can you do this without spending hours a day on the web searching for similar blog topics? How can you break out of the usual blogs you read and get some fresh, new perspectives on your topics of interest? Use search engines with RSS output.

There are a couple engines that provide this feature, but in my experience Google works the best. (Isn’t it funny how a once cutting-edge company eventually becomes the new evil-empire as it starts to do things really well? So why do I feel bad promoting them?) I used Blogdigger too, but Google actually indexed and gave me the results Blogdigger uniquely generated for me.

Back to my original point. You can use the Google engine to search blogs that cover some of the same topics you discuss. If you use the suggestions from a site like Googleguide it will help you get even more specific, thereby relevant, results. I would play with the Google engine a little bit until you start to get results that you like, before I started to subscribing to feeds.

Once you get feeds coming in, you will know what the rest of the blogosphere is saying and be able to engage in the conversation.

I have been suggesting you do some really unique things with an RSS feed using a lot of different programs that exist throughout the internet. Sometimes they don’t seem to work really well. This is because the internet is the great equalizer: you can’t tell if the article you are reading is from a world-wide recognized authority on the subject or a crazy old man whose son gave him a computer. The same is true with programs you find on the internet- some are created by professional programmers and others by people who hack together whatever code they can find whether they understand it or not.

What can you do (in the world of RSS) when a feed produced by one service doesn’t want to be read by another? Don’t worry, there’s hope for you.

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Some might say that Google is a know-it-all. Sure he knows a lot of facts on topics that range from the mundane to the profound. We all know people who can quote what other people say, but the really interesting people are those who can think for themselves. You might be tempted to say that about Google, but you’d be wrong. Google has opinions about lots of things. He even has an opinion about the Presidential candidates- even if he can’t vote.

Let me tell you how to get his opinion out of him.

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I’ve recently discovered a new tool that I’ve found helpful this Christmas season- track2rss. Previously I had used simpletracking.com but that site does not support UPS.

While some of the shipping companies allow you to do e-mail updates, you can do this yourself by creating a feed with track2rss and submitting the feed to BlogAlert.

Remember that the feed only updates once a day. I’ve found that’s fine since all I really need to know is the day it is out for delivery. Another limitation is that only one item exists in the feed at a time- only the most recent location is displayed- so there’s no history of where your package has been. This doesn’t matter really, does it.

If you want to get really fancy, you can convert your track2rss feed into a map using GeoNames. Submit your feed to the ExploreOurPla.net box and you can view the location of the package.

Of course, Santa might not send all your Christmas gifts through the mail. Sometimes he delivers them personally. I have found Santa’s RSS feed (created with help from LinkAssure) that he uses to warn children of his arrival, so they can be sure to be in bed when he flies by their home. Here’s the map to keep track of his progress.

Thanks to a blog entry from Nick Bradbury, which put into words something I’ve been thinking about for a while, I have committed to one web feed format for the entire zimOrama network- RSS2. Because b2evolution (the program I have been using to generate these sites) offers many format, I’ve felt like I needed to use all the formats to entertain the maximum compatibility possible. That’s simply not true and only serves to confuse people by giving them too many possibilities.

Why did I pick this format? XML.com helped me sort out the options, from which I narrowed down the possibilities to two front-runners: RSS2 and Atom. To make this determination I found the Atom Wiki most helpful. I felt that Atom has a lot of features but I didn’t need all of them. RSS2 seems to be a more true XML format which would seem to me to be more usable in the future. Additionally the RSS2 format sends categories to the feed, while Atom does not. Since categories are an important part of the zimOrama network, I decided to go with RSS2. You can feel free to disagree with me on this one (if you do, leave it in the comments below).

You will notice that I also changed the auto-discovery on the zimOrama network to reflect my commitment to RSS2. This helps people by making it even easier to subscribe to a feed. I found an article on the FeedForAll website that helped me add a line of code inside my head tags so that browsers (or other programs, I presume) will automatically find the feed I want them to. Of course, in order to do this, you must already have a RSS feed created.

I hope these changes will not only help you as you use this site (or the rest of the zimOrama network) but also inspire you to consoidate your web feeds as well.

If you would like to receive other helpful feeds like this one, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Way back in the nineties the world was consumed with looking for a man named Waldo. He was a goofy character with funny glasses who couldn’t seem to stay in one place. You might say the same about U2’s famous front man- Bono. As an avid U2 fan, I enjoy keeping up with the exploits of their outspoken lead sinner. But there is a problem- how can I keep up with such a globetrotter? Where’s Bono?

Thanks to the power of RSS, U2 fans can always keep up with Bono- not in a big-brother/creepy stalker way. Let me show you how.

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Dizzysoft is offering an exciting new service- Tame the Jungle. Rather than searching the internet for products you are interested in, just give Tame the Jungle a topic and it will keep you informed on all the latest products available through an RSS feed- which you can put on your Yahoo! or Google start page, receive by e-mail, have sent to your cell phone, or receive in many other ways.

Are you a mystery novel fanatic? Give the word, “mystery” to Tame the Jungle and you will be informed of many new titles.

Do you love to listen to jazz? Tell Tame the Jungle and it will give you suggestions whenever you wish.

Do you teach United States History? Ask Tame the Jungle to keep you updated with the latest books on the subject.

Are you a techie who has to have the latest Palm handheld? Tame the Jungle will be happy to tell you about all the devices and accessories that are available, and the new ones as soon as they come out.

There are no limits to the uses for this free service.

The best part of this service is that, if you use the Tame the Jungle RSS feed option, you are guaranteed never to receive any spam from the service.

Don’t be overwhelmed by the dense undergrowth of the internet. Don’t let it stop you from getting what you want. Use Tame the Jungle to cut through it and finally see what you’ve been looking for.

The US government has a web page that posts the Privately Owned Vehicle (POV) Mileage Reimbursement Rates. You can check this site whenever you need to know the current reimbursement rate. This is where I get the information posted at the top of this website.

You can be automatically informed when this rate changes by subscribing to this RSS feed, which uses wotzwot.com’s RSSxl page to take that information off the GSA website. This rate changes every year or so, but potentially could change more frequently as gas prices increase rapidly (as they did with Katrina in September of 2005, as you can see from the site’s “Previous Automobile Rates").

If you want to keep track of your vehicle mileage (whether airplane or car) for reimbursement or income tax deduction, use the Mileage program for PalmOS.

What’s great about RSS feeds is you are updated with information that you specifically asked for whenever you want to check it. This convenience is making me lazy because whenever I come across a website without an RSS feed I wonder how I am supposed to know when the information on it changes. Is there a way to be updated about the changes on a website without visiting it all the time? Yes there is and RSS can help.

Read more »

All your friends have RSS feeds- are you feeling a little left out? How can you create a unique RSS feed that’s free, doesn’t require you to sign up for anything, or requires a Computer Science degree? Here are ten (or more) ways to get an RSS feed for free, using existing web services. I have these suggestions from an older post on the 3spots blog and selected a few that fit the above criteria.

Search results given in RSS format- many search engines provide the ability to retrieve a search in RSS format. When you subscribe to the feed, you will be automatically informed when something new comes up on the topic you suggested. While the regular Google search does not do this, the blogsearch and news searches do allow this format- which is what I mean by “or more” in the title.

1. Yahoo
2. Live Search
3. Blogdigger: Shows blog feeds and let’s you subscribe to search results.
4. RSS Micro

5. Tame the Jungle: Search for products by name, title, category, or whatever.

   Notification

6. Reminderfeed: Create a reminder message that will be delivered by feed.

   Webpage notification- if your site does not have its own feed or you want to watch another site, you can use one of these services.

7. page2rss tells you when and how a website changes.
8. RSSxl Beta creates an RSS 2.0 feed from a webpage based upon the search criteria you give it.

9. feedity creates an RSS feed from a webpage.

   Mix a feed from other existing feeds, or using the services above, to create your own feed.

10. FeedJumbler: Merge/splice several RSS or Atom-based feeds into one combined RSS and/or Atom feed.

Please accept my invitation to suggest your own services that allow you to create a unique RSS feed (considering the criteria: free, no login and no programming) in the comments below. You an keep track of this list using the social bookmarking sites below.

Subscribe to my own RSS feed (on the sidebar) to receive other articles like this one.

So you got an RSS feed. Now what should you do? Here are 23 things you can do with them (and a brief explanation of why you might do it). I have taken them from an older post on the 3spots blog, but whittled them down to the ones that are free, require no login, and have no expectation of programming experience- so anyone can use them.

Embed RSS feed on your own website using these various formats and varying degrees of customization.

1. FeedJumbler: This site does many things including provide an RSS javascript generator.
2. Feed2JS.org. Alternative links: 1, 2, 3
3. Feedostyle: Scrolling linkroll generator with a lot of options
4. FeedSweep by howdev.com: Feedroll generator, has several styles and Advanced version with lots of options.
5. RSS to JavaScript Converter by BlinkBits.
6. RSS-spider News Wizard
7. RSS-xpress Lite from UKOLN at the University of Bath: RSS to JavaScript Converter
8. RSS2GIF: This is like a button, an auto-updating image showing your latest entries.
9. RSS/RDF/ATOM Converter v4.0
10. RSS/RDF/ATOM to JavaScript Scroller 1.0
11. RSS/RDF/ATOM to JavaScript Boxes 1.0
12. RssTickr

13. Feedbucket: Online reader (login optional). If you submit a feed, it will generate a javascript code to insert on your website.

    Convert RSS feed into one of many other useful formats.

14. FeedJumbler: This does many things including converting an RSS or Atom-based feed into RSS, Atom and/or HTML and JavaScript.
15. rss2pdf.org: RSS/OPML to PDF. [alternative link]
16. RSS 2 PDF.com: converter. Like the sites above that do the same thing, the PDF format makes it easy to print and read your RSS feed.

17. GeoNames: rss to GeoRSS converter. See where in the world the items of your feed are happening.

    Mix your different feeds into one simple feed. This is a nice way to categorize your feeds or to put many feeds into one place.

18. FeedJumbler: Merge/splice several RSS or Atom-based feeds into one combined RSS and/or Atom feed.

    Search an RSS feed for something specific, cutting out the superfluous information you are not interested in.

19. FeedFinding: Generates a URL from one or several RSS feeds, where you change the [SEARCH TERM]

20. Feedshifter: Ajax application.

    Read your feed in E-mail/IM rather than in a blog reader or online. You could even send it to your cell phone (but be ware of spam, no matter what they promise.

21. BlogAlert
22. rss2pdf.org: In addition to converting an RSS feed into PDF, it can also send it to you by e-mail
23. Feedcrier: RSS to IM

Don’t have a feed to play with, here’s 10 or more ways to make your own RSS feed for free.

If you have another service you would like to suggest that fits the above criteria (free, no login and no programming) please suggest it in the comments below. You can keep track of this site using the social bookmarking buttons below.

If you would like to keep up with other helpful articles like this one, subscribe to the RSS feed available on the sidebar.

My recent obsession with RSS feeds has sent me on a search for the perfect way to read them. At first I used the built-in feed reader that comes with IE7. That proved limited by the same things that lead me to abandon Outlook Mail for Yahoo! Web Mail. I searched for a good web-based RSS feed reader so I could access my feeds from any computer and not miss out on any important news.

Read more »

Thanks to RSS you can save money by finding the cheapest gas in your area.

You’ll have to visit FuelMeUp.com to get a list of gas prices. Notice that the gas stations are listed neatly in a consistently formatted table. Since the content we are interested in is formatted so cleanly, we can use one of the many web to RSS sites to scrape the data and convert it into an RSS feed. There is a lot of extraneous information on this page, that we aren’t interested in for this purpose, but if we click “Show All Stations” at the bottom of the page, we will only get the information we want.

In the past I’ve used page2rss to convert web pages to RSS feeds. I really pleased with how quickly this site updates me with a change to a page. If we use the “Show All Stations” page and give it to page2rss, we will be notified any time something changes here- even if its some of the information we are not interested in (such as formatting). Here’s an example of this feed for my zip code in Lake Wylie, SC.

If we want to be a little more specific we can turn to RSSxl. There we can enter the “Show All Stations” address and (after viewing the source code from the page) give a beginning and ending string for each item in the feed. In this case I used <tr (notice the missing >) for the beginning of the item and </tr> for the end. This produces a feed with the store’s name, address, and current price, as well as the date. On top of that we have a few extra characters ("Update Gas Prices") left over from the page, where you might tell the site the latest info. Here’s the feed this site creates for my home in Lake Wylie, SC.

If we turn to Feed43 we can cut out the rest of this extraneous information. With a little knowledge of HTML, and a few minutes to follow their tutorial, we can get only the information we are interested in and convert it into an RSS feed. We can also give the feed a unique title (besides the name of the web page that the other sites automatically sets). The best part of this is that Feed43 gives you a link to edit this feed later- something none of the other web page to RSS feed conversion sites offer. This makes it easy to “fix” a feed when the site changes formatting. Here’s the feed for my hometown.

Once we have a feed we can decide how we want to retrieve it. I have a copy of the feed in my blog reader, to check at from home. I also have a copy of this feed sent to my cell phone by SMS- so I can stay up to date while on the road.

After writing this post I realized that this was still generating too much information. What I really want to know is, “who has the cheapest gas in town?” and not, “what is every gas station charging for gas?” With a little tweaking, I changed the Feed43 feed to only produce one station- the top station listed, which will always be the cheapest Gas station. Now I can compare other stations with the cheapest gas and decide if it is worth traveling to the cheapest station.

When I use this feed, and keep track of my deductible miles with Mileage on my Palm handheld I save even more money!

In an article I read recently it pointed out that 70% of companies do not offer RSS feeds on their websites.

I understand why. Many businesses don’t understand the web and its potential, let alone features like RSS. They put a website up because they are “supposed to” or want to somehow appeal to younger demographics. I think most companies are getting wiser to the potential of a good website but they are still missing out.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication,” which is a good description but still might leave a novice in the dark. Basically RSS is a means of communication to people who are interested in what you have to say that is automatically delivered to them in any way they choose. Conventional advertising with television and newspapers, for example, are like a net that is spread open widely in hopes of catching some of the fish that are around. RSS, on the other hand, is like a worm on a hook that fish get because they are interested in.

What could you do with a marketing conduit that directly addressed people who are specifically interested in your product? What could you do with your customers if you had a way to directly and specifically communicate to them the latest news about your services? These are some of the things a good RSS feed can do for you. Here are some more.

Dizzysoft.com would like to help your company set up its RSS services. Just contact us with your needs and we will get you started.

You can also subscribe to the dizzysoft.com RSS feed to get more innovative ideas like this one.

Link: http://www.dizzysoft.com/mileage/TheBestDrivingTips.xml

I have created an RSS feed that contains all the best driving tips in one place. This feed includes safe driving tips and ways to save gas. I hope you will find it useful. If you drive a lot- for work or pleasure- you will find the information in this RSS feed to be useful. I will also keep this feed updated with the current mileage reimbursement rate.

There were some coding errors in this feed that I have corrected. I hope, now, it is easier to read and more helpful