Niall Kennedy is on a roll, having this week published an informative series of posts on the RSS platform and the 'state of the aggregator':
I don't really have anything to add, being busy in the middle of other work right now. But I wanted to at least point to Niall's posts, because it's 'must read' material for anybody interested in RSS and microcontent aggregation. As he summarized in the State of the aggregator post:
"We have only just begun to explore the full possibilities of current feed technologies. Rich media enclosures, related content definitions, and well-defined author data open up new possibilities for user interaction and content discoverability. I believe most future uses of syndication technology will occur behind the scenes as a transport layer opening up a common XML parsing format to multiple applications and specialized uses. We've only just begun to change the world of publishing, customization, and personal empowerment."
Go check it out... also Dare Obasanjo summarized a recent ETech presentation on the same themes.
Flickr pic by JoshB
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TITLE: Feeds as a Platform URL: http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2006/03/14/Feeds-as-a-Platform IP: 67.19.173.84 BLOG NAME: Sam Ruby DATE: 03/14/2006 07:31:25 AM Read More
Richard MacManus: Niall Kennedy is on a roll, having this week published an informative series of posts... Read More
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Hi Richard,
I'll let you know when it goes live (should be end of this week), but my site swapzies.com is addressing this concept of media content aggregation, albeit in a slightly different way than by RSS feeds.
On Thursday or Friday we'll be releasing our 'Channels' feature. Anyone can 'broadcast' a channel. They are basically an open line of communication between a user and anyone he or she wants to send their content to.
The focus is on video, photo, music as well as more general files.
On the smallest scale, a channel can be operated by an individual user. This channel could just be a conduit for perhaps photos and video. Friends and family can subscribe and be kept up to date with what the user is in to right now, being alerted everytime the channel is updated.
At the other end of the scale, a video podcast producer could operate a channel. Subscribers to this channel would be alerted the moment a new episode becomes available and they can watch it online (at swapzies).
The big idea is that a single page aggregating all the media files one might access will become more and more useful as an ever greater amount of rich media is distributed via the internet.
Theoretically every media form could be distributed this way, from private individual's output to what we currently regard as TV channels. (I could sign up to a BBC1 channel, for example, and get all the BBC1 programs via my swapzies channel.)
We envisage a typical swapzies user subscribing to perhaps 20 private friend's channels, half a dozen podcasts and one or two 'premium' feeds*.
(*Content providers will be able to charge a fee for subscription.)
Each channel producer will have access to an icon and the relevant code to enable users to 'Add to Channels' from a third party website. For example you could display the icon on this blog and if a user clicks it, your channel is automatically added to their list of subscriptions. Your channel could perhaps consist of all the non-text information (podcasts, photos, etc) that might be of interest to your readers.
The intended result is that with one visit to swapzies, a user can see which of his many subscribed to channels has uploaded new content.
I'll keep you posted...!
Posted by: Jack | March 14, 2006 5:19 AMThanks for the photo credit! It was taken at Amar Ghandi's session on RSS at PDC05. It was interesting to see how the RSS team at Microsoft viewed RSS as a platform.
Posted by: Josh Bancroft | March 14, 2006 8:38 AM