Something about RSS [RSS news and comments]

eBay RSS (II):

Two important news:

- We decided to change the name of the script :). Now it's ebay2rss.php. Actually, initial name and link is still working.

- We've just launched a new free online service to create from our site your eBay RSS feed. Don't confuse these two things: one is the free software (ebay2rss.php) you can install & customize on your website, and the other is our hosted service for eBay2RSS. Now you don't have to install it on your own website - you can use it from ours. Of course, eBay2RSS service uses a customized version of our ebay2rss.php script. Read more about specific conditions for this service on its page (or see this demo).

eBay RSS:

We have just posted a free PHP script (ebayrss.php) to create RSS feeds from eBay categories or user products. If you are are selling products on eBay and have a web site you might be interested to add RSS feeds with your products. You could get visitors from RSS users because your RSS feed is available virtually for any RSS reader. This page is easy to install, full documented and simply to use. You should try it.

My MSN & RSS Support:

According to the news MSN is ready to expand RSS support with My MSN. They will add an RSS aggregator, developed in partnership with Moreover Technologies.

This was the informational part of the news and now the comments. In my mind is clear that MSN saw Yahoo success with My Yahoo which include an online RSS reader (aggregation). Yahoo links to add RSS feeds to their pages are everywhere and are very popular. MSN couldn't afford to avoid this technology, but the issue is that they implemented it only after other people proved it. The same, I think, will happen with adding RSS reader capabilities to IE (Mozilla Firefox and Opera already proved it).

One thing I don't like with My MSN is that nothing is displayed until you login. Looks like an email collector page where nothing is available until you give him email address. Here, of course is not the case, but My Yahoo solution where you already have some content you can customize is much better.

RSSlib v1.04:

We posted a new version of RSSlib with a new parameter: display_channel_name .
Default value is true. When setting this value to false channel name & link is not displayed.

RSSlib are freeware PHP and ASP scripts to display RSS feeds on websites with two methods: rss2html (producing HTML) & rss2js (producing JavaScript). They are simple but powerfull, and customizable.

Atom2RSS smart quotes:

We had some problems with encoding some characters with Atom2RSS service, especially dealing with (smart) quotes, but not only. Now, we are doing some conversions:

& #x2019; ( ’ ) + & #x2018; ( ‘ ) => '
& #x201D; ( ” ) + & #x201C; ( “ ) => "
& #x2013 + & #x2022; => -

Maybe is not the best solution, but hopefully this will solve problems.

RSS on consumer electronics:

According to a BusinessWire PR soon we could have RSS on consumer electronics as DVD Players & Set-Top Boxes, via NewsGator:

"NewsGator Technologies, the leading RSS software platform provider, today announced support for the upcoming DivX Connected Certification Program from DivXNetworks, Inc. Through the program, users will be able to easily access RSS news and information feeds from the popular NewsGator Online service on their televisions through low-cost, connected consumer electronics (CE) devices such as DVD players and set-top boxes."

Maybe in future we'll see RSS in many other devices not only on our computers or PDAs.