RSS and Atom are specifications that give users the power to subscribe to information they want to receive and give content developers tools to provide continuous subscriptions to willing recipients in a spam-free setting. RSS and Atom are the technical power behind the growing millions of blogs on the Web. Blogs change the Web from a set of static pages or sites requiring programming expertise to update to an ever changing, constantly updated landscape that anyone can contribute to. RSS and Atom syndication provides users an easy way to track new information on as many Web sites as they want. This book offers you insight to understanding the issues facing the user community so you can meet users' needs by writing software and Web sites using RSS and Atom feeds.

RSS is sprouting all over the Web, connecting weblogs and providing news feeds. Originally developed by Netscape in 1999, RSS (which can stand for RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication) is an XML-based format that allows web developers to describe and syndicate web site content. Using RSS files allows developers to create a data feed that supplies headlines, links, and article summaries from a web site. Other sites can then incorporate them into their pages automatically. Although RSS is in widespread use, people struggle with its confusing and sometimes conflicting documentation and versions. Content Syndication with RSS is the first book to provide a comprehensive reference to the specifications and the tools that make syndication possible.

This book will help readers choose software, subscribe to the best podcasts, record a podcast…and more

This is a concise yet comprehensive guide to feeds and syndication for content professionals, web developers and marketing teams who want to understand what RSS and content syndication is, how it works, what it can for them, and how they can get it up and running. The feed formats and vocabularies are covered in depth, and the book does require some familiarity with XML, but no scripting or development expertise is necessary.

RSS and Atom in Action is organized into two parts. The first part introduces the blog technologies of news feed formats and publishing protocols-the building blocks. The second part shows how to put to those blocks together to assemble interesting and useful blog applications. In keeping with the behind Manning's "In Action" series, this book shows the reader, through numerous examples in Java and C#, how to parse Atom and RSS format newsfeeds, how to generate valid newsfeeds and serve them efficiently, and how to automate blogging via web services based on the new

Atom protocol and the older MetaWeblog API. The book also shows how to develop a complete blog client library that readers can use in their own applications. The second half of the book is devoted to a dozen blog apps-small but immediately useful example applications such as a community aggregator, a file distribution newsfeed, a blog cross-poster, an email-to-blog gateway, Ant tasks for blogging softwarebuilds, and more.

So you have a business and you have a Web site. Bravo! You’re doing all the right things to be successful. But wait — the information on your Web site needs to be updated, and your customers need to know.

Good heavens, didn’t you spend half of last week doing that? There’s got to be a quicker, easier way to keep your clientele informed, and while we’re at it, how about building your business too? RSS can come to your rescue, but first you need to know what it is and how to use it. Syndicating Web Sites With RSS Feeds For Dummies has what you need to know to get up and running fast—and with today’s flood of constantly-changing information, “fast” is a top priority.

Perhaps the most explosive technological trend over the past two years has been blogging. As a matter of fact, it's been reported that the number of blogs during that time has grown from 100,000 to 4.8 million-with no end to this growth in sight. What's the technology that makes blogging tick? The answer is RSS--a format that allows bloggers to offer XML-based feeds of their content. It's also the same technology that's incorporated into the websites of media outlets so they can offer material (headlines, links, articles, etc.) syndicated by other sites.

As the main technology behind this rapidly growing field of content syndication, RSS is constantly evolving to keep pace with worldwide demand. That's where Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom steps in. It provides bloggers, web developers, and programmers with a thorough explanation of syndication in general and the most popular technologies used to develop feeds. This book not only highlights all the new features of RSS 2.0-the most recent RSS specification-but also offers complete coverage of its close second in the XML-feed arena, Atom.