Lesson 3: RSS Feeds, 2010 edition

Background

1. RSS powerpoint from Tues Mar 16, 2010 ppt
2. RSS in plain English, Commoncraft (video)
3. RSS (Wikipedia)

Reading and Following RSS Feeds--suggested activities:

1. RSS Feed Sampler 2010 (a collection of RSS feeds to explore) 
2. Save a Live Bookmark in Firefox 
3. Try a feed reader.  Google Reader and Bloglines are two popular readers.
   If you already have a Google account, you can use the same username and password for Google Reader.  See the resources below for instructions. 
   Getting Started with Google Reader (video)
   Reading Feeds with Google Reader (video) - From Google Reader Help Channel.
   Sharing Items with Google Reader (video)- From Google Reader Help Channel.
   Bloglines Help page (website)
4. Try a portal.  You can create a customized home page that includes RSS feeds and other resources.   MyYahoo!  (use same username and password as Yahoo! email account) and iGoogle- (same username and password for all Google applications) are two examples

Library RSS Applications

1. View Examples of Library RSS Applications (video)
2. See Online Resources available at the University of Illinois that offer RSS Feeds (PDF)

RSS to html

RSS feeds can be displayed in web pages to produce continuously updating updating content.   Available tools for RSS to html include 

• University of Illinois Web Services Toolbox (netID and password required) List Builder 
• Feedburner
• Feed2JS.  

Scopus recently implemented a tool that builds a script to display a Scopus feed from a saved search in a scrolling window on a web page.