RSS - the future of the Internet?
One friend of mine once wrote in ICQ that he practically stopped visiting sites, and instead reads everything through RSS. This idea fell into my head, and I decided to systematize my knowledge about this technology, and think about what is missing in it. Perhaps, in the future, the main element of the Internet will be not a site, but any source of RSS content, even simply shared by someone in a Google reader?
In short, this technology allows you to monitor updates on sites. If there are few sites, it’s not a problem once a day or an hour to drop by each and see if there is anything new. When there are several dozen of them, RSS saves. More precisely - Feed , because there is an even newer Atom format . More details, including their history, can be read in computer. There are many different programs and services for reading them, I use the Google Reader Watcher and Brief plugins for FireFox.
The main types of existing services for RSS now are:
RSS is also actively used to distribute (and automatically download) large files using the BitTorrent protocol , mainly TV shows. Read more: uTorrent , LostFilm , NovaFilm , EZTV (English series), torrents.ru , NNM-Club , anime .
The main operations in RSS readers, apart from marking it as read :) are:
The first thing RSS is missing is managing the number of news feeds. Let's say there are 20 entries in the site’s feed, you start the RSS reader once a day, and for that day 21 news appeared there - you’ll already miss one. Alternatively, you could add a link to the previous page of the feed in RSS, this will allow the server to store it in static files (less load), and the client to collect the history of the desired depth. Another option is a link to a script, which as a parameter can be set to the desired number of posts, or the required time range. In the GData standard , for example, this is provided. A similar opportunity is provided by Google : 'http://www.google.com/reader/atom/feed/' + feed address + '? N =' + number of entries (default = 20), but it does not store the history of all feeds.
It would be nice to be able to filter and group the contents of the feed by its tags / categories and authors, if the category / author field is in it. Now Google Reader does not process them in any way, but it would be nice to see a “plus sign” next to the tape like its tag folders, when you click on it, a list of tags / categories of posts of this tape with the ability to read only the posts marked with this tag appears. Although for sure it is in some other RSS reader.
The ability to post a comment directly from the RSS reader. This is provided for in the Atom Publishing Protocol and in GData, there are many standards such as OpenID for authorization , probably sooner or later such an opportunity will appear.
Links to the feeds associated with this post, with the ability to subscribe to them with one click, like clicking Star / Share. For example, to subscribe to the comment feed for this post. And vice versa, from the comment feed to the post - links to the main feed.
The latter would greatly facilitate reading the forum in the RSS reader. The main feed could be a list of all subforums. With one click of the mouse right in the RSS reader, one could subscribe to new topics in selected sub-forums. Also, with one click - subscribe to all posts of your favorite topic.
Perhaps exporting all the data from forums and blogs will erase the difference between them. If you take all the new forum topics, group by author, and sort by the date of the first post - we get a set of blogs. And if you group all the posts from blogs, for example, by tags, and sort by the date of the last comment, you will get a forum from the blogs. All this could be done in the RSS reader :)
And what is missing from RSS or would you like to see it?
In short, this technology allows you to monitor updates on sites. If there are few sites, it’s not a problem once a day or an hour to drop by each and see if there is anything new. When there are several dozen of them, RSS saves. More precisely - Feed , because there is an even newer Atom format . More details, including their history, can be read in computer. There are many different programs and services for reading them, I use the Google Reader Watcher and Brief plugins for FireFox.
The main types of existing services for RSS now are:
- Aggregators that allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds into one. The most popular, of course, is Google Reader . In addition, it allows you to share your collections, for example mine: web , java , p2p , and the rest .
- Filters that allow you to select only part of the news from the RSS feed. The most powerful is Yahoo Pipes .
- Caches. If the RSS feed generation on your site / server is too heavy, you can use, for example, FeedBurner (bought by Google). It also provides statistics about the audience of your feed.
- Keeping a story. As at one time there was dejanews for newsgroups and web.archive.org for the Internet. For example, Google Reader, when you add RSS feeds to it, automatically provides its entire history (since the first time anyone added this feed).
- The creators of RSS feeds for those sites on which they are not. From simple types like page2rss (e.g. K-Lite ) to sophisticated types, again, Yahoo Pipes (e.g. Movie Crap Reviews ).
- Advertising in RSS feeds. Just starting to appear, for example at Google .
- RSS export services in the form of html, pdf, js, images, sending by e-mail, etc.
RSS is also actively used to distribute (and automatically download) large files using the BitTorrent protocol , mainly TV shows. Read more: uTorrent , LostFilm , NovaFilm , EZTV (English series), torrents.ru , NNM-Club , anime .
The main operations in RSS readers, apart from marking it as read :) are:
- Star Type “asterisk” as important, add to favorites / bookmarks.
- Share Share. Add to your feed visible to friends.
- Tag. Mark with tags (categories) or put in a folder - different types of classification
- Comment. Add your comment to the news.
The first thing RSS is missing is managing the number of news feeds. Let's say there are 20 entries in the site’s feed, you start the RSS reader once a day, and for that day 21 news appeared there - you’ll already miss one. Alternatively, you could add a link to the previous page of the feed in RSS, this will allow the server to store it in static files (less load), and the client to collect the history of the desired depth. Another option is a link to a script, which as a parameter can be set to the desired number of posts, or the required time range. In the GData standard , for example, this is provided. A similar opportunity is provided by Google : 'http://www.google.com/reader/atom/feed/' + feed address + '? N =' + number of entries (default = 20), but it does not store the history of all feeds.
It would be nice to be able to filter and group the contents of the feed by its tags / categories and authors, if the category / author field is in it. Now Google Reader does not process them in any way, but it would be nice to see a “plus sign” next to the tape like its tag folders, when you click on it, a list of tags / categories of posts of this tape with the ability to read only the posts marked with this tag appears. Although for sure it is in some other RSS reader.
The ability to post a comment directly from the RSS reader. This is provided for in the Atom Publishing Protocol and in GData, there are many standards such as OpenID for authorization , probably sooner or later such an opportunity will appear.
Links to the feeds associated with this post, with the ability to subscribe to them with one click, like clicking Star / Share. For example, to subscribe to the comment feed for this post. And vice versa, from the comment feed to the post - links to the main feed.
The latter would greatly facilitate reading the forum in the RSS reader. The main feed could be a list of all subforums. With one click of the mouse right in the RSS reader, one could subscribe to new topics in selected sub-forums. Also, with one click - subscribe to all posts of your favorite topic.
Perhaps exporting all the data from forums and blogs will erase the difference between them. If you take all the new forum topics, group by author, and sort by the date of the first post - we get a set of blogs. And if you group all the posts from blogs, for example, by tags, and sort by the date of the last comment, you will get a forum from the blogs. All this could be done in the RSS reader :)
And what is missing from RSS or would you like to see it?