Something about RSS [RSS news and comments]

Podcasting:

We've just updated our RSS directory to support podcasting. To read more about what this mean see this new article.

More and more feeds offers podcasts or enclosures, usually as audio MP3 or video MPEG attachments. So, we simply couldn't ignore them. For all new added feeds in our directory you can specify if supports podcasting or not. Or you can search our RSS directory only for podcast feeds. Now there are only a few but soon we'll have much more.

Yahoo & RSS ads:

Big news today: Overture tests RSS ads. It won't be long till we'll see RSS advertising from big players. Maybe Yahoo with Overture will be next, after Kanoodle.com. It's not a surprise that such a move come from Yahoo, because they are pushing more intensely RSS format. There are links to MyYahoo RSS reader everywhere. Plus they have news search that return RSS feeds (something that Google doesn't have).
Will be interesting to watch Google's next move, whether they will have ads for Atom or RSS, or maybe both.
Definitely, RSS advertising could be too big to be ignored, so, I'm pretty sure we'll see soon other official announcements.

RSS for mobiles:

Really Simple Mobile Surfing, by Carlo Longino
http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=101226

<< MocoNews thinks AOL might be up to something like this, based on a job posting for a development position there in "Wireless RSS". It says AOL is looking for somebody to build a Java/Brew RSS reader that "would allow users to browse for their most popular feeds as well as receive notifications on feed updates on their wireless devices. Features such as locality specific feeds (e.g. automatically get a feed of all theaters near your current location, with what movies are running) could also be integrated".>>

On the other hand, RSS for mobile surfing is already available at http://www.RSS2WAP.com which converts for free RSS feeds into WML, available on WAP devices. Try it and you might like it.

RSS spam - part 2:

RSS as site map.
There are many sites, maybe only with only a few static web pages (HTML), that have RSS feeds as site maps. This means that each page has an entry with a link and a small description. Actually, RSS is exactly this way, but what happen when those links won't change because the site is just a regular 5 pages static site? I think RSS is best used for new content as news or weblog entries, not for static, non-changeable sites. There are even RSS feeds having all links point only the site front page (not even links to different pages).
How often users expect your RSS feed to be changed is another story, but having always the same RSS feed is not what users expect. Also, you might think that your site will be available with RSS readers, having a static RSS feed, but this is not how RSS feeds are working. I those cases I guess users will unsubscribe automatically from your feed because it's always the same, simply not interesting.

RSS spam - part 1

I'll start a series of posts about RSS spam, as we see it with RSS feeds added in our RSS directory. Today topic: tooooo long feeds.

I won't you give you examples because this will be free advertising for those spam feeds. But, at 2RSS.com we are considering as RSS spam all feeds way too long. These include too many items or/and too many items with very long descriptions. There were RSS feeds with more than 100kb. Any decent RSS feeds should have a limited number of feeds, not hundreds, or not a couple of months old entries or everything they published. I don't see users interested in loading in their RSS Reader hundreds of RSS entries, every time they read that feed. There are not written rules how big a RSS feed should be, but keeping it decent is advisable.

2RSS Reader and profiles

We changed the name of our online RSS reader to "2RSS Reader" and updated it. This is just another free online RSS reader available at /news , fully integrated with our RSS directory.

For each RSS feed displayed in our directory there is a direct link to 2RSS Reader. Also, users can create free profiles with their RSS feeds list and use it in 2RSS Reader. All RSS feeds have a link to be added to a profile, and of course, you can delete any feed from you profile. Everything is managed online, so you don't have to install anything in order to read any feed.

Users even can display on their site RSS feed list saved in their profile (see 'Copy & paste in your page' from 'My RSS' page). Or they can request adding their own feed in other people profile, with a simple link. See this: /feeds.php?add=4539
This last feature link is automatically created when you add 'My RSS' link in your profile and this feed exists in our directory.

If you have questions please ask in http://forum.2rss.com . Thanks.

RSS Enclosure

More and more people are discussing about next step in RSS: enclosures. These are 'attachments' to RSS feed items or ATOM entries with media files (mp3, mpeg, etc.). InternetNews.com published yesterday an article about this: The RSS Enclosure Exposure.
But more details you can find at http://www.crocodile.org/lord/RSSenclosures.pdf .
With these enclosures we'll see maybe RSS strange places like p2p programs, media presentations or who knows where. What's next? RSS scripting?

RSS directory or RSS search engine?

Lately, I saw a few feed search engines having ten of thousands, hundred of thousands or even a million feeds. And I'm pretty sure soon will be even more search engines with more and more feeds. That's very good.
Our site has only a little more than 8.000 feeds but has a major difference: it's a RSS directory. All our feeds are organized in categories and are manually approved. This means that many of them don't pass the exam and are not approved. In a separate posting I'll talk more about this 'exam' and RSS spam (there are many things to say about RSS spam, so stay tuned).
How is different a RSS directory than a RSS search engine? Search engines are 'blind', harvesting everything that has feed format (RSS / Atom). Instead, in a RSS directory human decision is very important.
I made today a test searching 'Bush' at http://www.feedster.com/feedfinder.php . On the first page there was a French weblog with a single post in June 2004, of course, about Bush. Is it RSS? Yes. Is it about Bush? Yes. But, how relevant is a RSS feed with one post a few months ago? This is an example of 'blind' search where irrelevant or spammed posts are not eliminated.
So, my suggestion when you are looking for good RSS feeds is to not forget RSS directories.