Getting to Know Web Syndication

How often you have come across terms like Web syndication, RSS feeds, Web feeds? I think quite a lot in the past few years. These are the words that grabbed my attention too but not enough to look out for them at the first instance (I blame the procrastinator in me for it). Now, I feel that a lot has been said and talked about them and they can no longer be ignored in the context of Web. This article is an attempt to collate my understanding on syndication and related aspects; in the whole process, I feel I will myself better be able to consolidate my thoughts and awareness around this topic.
Think of Web syndication as backbone of the very popular use of ‘feeds,’ in today’s context. Let’s look at it like this – You visit a ‘technical gadgets review’ blog and the entries therein interest you. You think that the upcoming blog posts might also talk of information and analysis that will be worthy of note. So, what you do next is subscribe to this blog (via feeds). As a result, whenever any update occurs on that blog, you get to know of it via your browser. Many of us do it, many of us don’t. Many of us understand the ‘How’ behind it, many of us don’t.

What is it?

Web syndication refers to making content of one Web site available to multiple other Web sites. Sometimes also known as ‘subscribing,’ it is a feature that enables the end users to read updates from different Web sites without visiting each one of them individually.

How does that happen?

Web syndication is about making feeds available from a Web site. People can subscribe to these feeds and keep themselves updated of the latest information on a Web site for which they have subscribed the feeds.

What are feeds?

Feeds, RSS, RSS feeds, XML feeds, syndicated content, syndicated feed, and Web feeds are words that mean the same thing. Yes, they are synonyms in the technical Web jargon and refer to a file, an XML document, containing frequently updated content posted on a Web site. It can contain either summary (with link to the full text) or full text of the updated content, plus related metadata such as publishing dates and authorship details. You can consider feeds as Web pages that are meant to be read by computers and not people. These XML files are formatted in a way to be read by feed readers or aggregators. (Hold that thought right there; we’ll look at feed readers in a while.)

There are mainly two formats in which feeds appear: RSS (really simple syndication) and Atom. Both the formats are based on XML and are constantly being updated with new versions. (I am intentionally skipping the technicalities that make the two different.)

What is the difference between a feed and a Web site?

A feed might have the same content as the Web pages of a Web site however in a different format. In addition, the feed gives you access to the content that is posted or updated since you last visited the feed---this helps you view only the new content, unlike a Web site.

Who publishes feeds?

Anyone who publishes content on a Web site can publish a feed. The publisher can publish a single feed for an entire Web page or multiple feeds relating to different sections of a Web page.

For which Web sites are feeds used?

Feeds are used the most for blogs and news Web sites for the obvious reason that their Web pages are updated with content frequently; however, feeds are also used to deliver other digital content such as audios, videos and pictures. (Podcasting also uses feeds.)

How to use feeds?

To use feeds, one needs to:

1. have a feed reader and
2. subscribe to the feeds.

What is a feed reader?

It is a specialized software application that checks the feeds and provides the end user with all the updates made to a Web site(s). It is designed to read feeds from multiple sources/Web sites. In short, a typical feed reader will, for the subscribed Web pages, check the updates, download them, and provide a user interface for end users to read the updates.

Are there different kinds of feed readers?

Yes, there are primarily five types of feed readers:

1. Web-based feed readers (e.g., Google reader, MyYahoo): If you want to read all your feeds within your Web browser, go for the Web-based feed reader. It allows you to access your feed subscriptions from any computer. You just need to sign in to the Web site that manages your feeds.
   
   
2. Desktop feed readers (e.g., FeedDemon and FeedReader for Windows): If you want to read all your feeds apart from your browser, you need to install a desktop feed reader. It has technically advanced features than a Web-based feed reader. It allows you to download and store the updates on the computer that has this reader installed, even if you are offline. While selecting this feed reader, choose the one that works well with your computer because different feed readers work well on different operating systems.
   
   
3. Browser built-in feed readers (e.g., Firefox’s Live Bookmarks, IE7’s Feeds and Favorites): New browsers, such as Firefox, IE7, Opera, or Safari, have built-in feed readers.
   
   
4. Email-based feed readers (Google Alerts, Mozilla Thunderbird): If you want all your feeds delivered via your email, get the email-based feed readers.
   
   
5. Mobile feed readers (Google mobile, yahoo mobile): If you want to read your feeds on your mobile device, getting this one would be a good idea.

Which software to install?

If you wish to read your feeds on a computer and not very keen on a specific format (say, email), you need not install or download any software provided you use any of the modern browsers such as IE 7, Firefox, or Safari. These browsers provide support for the feeds. For example, in IE7, if you activate the Commands Bar, you will see the RSS feed icon at the second position from left. This icon usually appears grey however turns orange if the Web site you are exploring offers feeds. On the other hand, while using Firefox, you will experience that if a Web page contains feeds, the Web address bar will show the orange icon against it. In Safari, you will see a blue RSS logo at the right side of the address bar if the Web page contains feeds. These modern Web browsers receive feeds from their toolbars using Live Bookmarks, Favorites, and so on.

How to subscribe to feeds?

You can subscribe to feeds related to a Web slice (one section of a Web page that is frequently updated and has a feed associated with it) or whole of the Web page. (Note: When you add a Web slice to the favorites bar, you automatically subscribe to its feed.) You just need to click the feed button to subscribe to the related feeds. This is, usually, an orange button with a white dot surrounded by two quarter circular strands. (Sometimes, the feed button is in the form of a blue colored RSS icon—yes, by that name itself.) Clicking it opens the Web page with the content and an option of subscribing wherein you can add the Web page to your Favorites or Bookmarks as well, depending on the browser you use.

When subscribing to a feed, your browser also gives you an option of selecting the interval for checking the updates. So, you can get updates after a specific time interval that you set for your browser.

After subscribing to the feeds on single or multiple Web sites, your browser (built-in feed reader) will check and download all the updates, and you can read those in your own sweet, convenient time.

How much does it cost?

It usually does not cost to subscribe to feeds. Also, most of the feed readers are free however some downloadable desktop and mobile feed readers can cost somewhere around $20-$50.

This article is just the tip of the iceberg called Web syndication. There is so much more to it in terms of current uses and future possibilities for individuals, business owners, and academic circles. I hope that this article helped you au fait about fundamentals of web syndication.

Web 2.0: Empowering the User

I have been thinking about writing on Web 2.0 for quite sometime and now I am happy to be almost there after much procrastination---though it is not progressive to write on it after scribbling an article on Web 3.0 but trust me, it is not retrogressive either. So much has been said about Web 2.0 that it seems to be ubiquitous however if you ask someone to define Web 2.0 for you, most often than not people might say “Umm… Do you know what social networking is?” or “Well, do you know what Flickr is?” … These are the applications of Web 2.0 that are common today however Web 2.0 is not limited or defined by these applications alone. Web 2.0 is no version of Web that is released by some company. It is rather a concept of Web applications that gives the users the right of reading and writing on the Web. When I say “writing,” it means writing afresh and also being able to edit the old text. Web 2.0 gives you the freedom to make changes to the already existing content---content includes text, images, as well as multimedia. So, the different applications that one uses today, say blogging, podcasting, and getting RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, are features of Web 2.0. To know more about it, let’s look back and notice what led to the emergence of Web 2.0.

As the term itself suggests, Web 2.0 is some phenomenon that followed Web 1.0. So, the next question that arises is that how did Web progress from 1.0 to 2.0 and what is the difference between the two?

Moving From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

In the early 2000s, the then prevalent Web (Web 1.0) was experiencing a change---a change that let the user take control over the information that was available on the Web. The Web was transforming from being just a medium “of getting information” to a platform “of getting, modifying, publishing, and sharing information.” While Web 1.0 could be considered “Information-only Web,” Web 2.0 could easily be labelled as the “Participatory Web.” The Participatory Web allowed (or gives an opportunity to) the users to add the value of participation to what they (users) read over the Web. The result was a Web that was taking the form of a network where people could publish afresh or modify or add to already existing content. Web 1.0 was about control and Web 2.0, more about collaboration. Blogs and wikis can be considered the quintessential examples of Web 2.0 wherein the users are given the tools to add comments (as in blogs) or even edit the post (as in wikis).

Web 2.0

Emergence of Web 2.0 is not a technological revolution, it is a social revolution. Web 2.0 is not a technology, but a concept that is about opening up the Web to enable and encourage participation (by users to use the content as they like) using different applications and services. Web 2.0 makes the Web more user friendly---people can write and modify as they feel like, unlike Web 1.0 wherein users could only read the stuff on Web (it was the so called “read version of Web”). It gives flexibility to the users to play around with the content (text and media) on the Web irrespective of their technical programming background. Because people can write, edit what they wrote, and add on to it, Web 2.0 leads itself to a forum where people at different locations can interact. Discussion forums are a wonderful example of the same---people can post their thoughts, get feedback, understand new concepts, and freeze on their finding. Many e-learning assignments can and do take advantage of discussion forums.

Web 2.0 empowers the users--- the Internet becomes more interesting as there is something you can do on it, your friends can do on it, and all of them and more of others can get to see it, learn from it, and contribute to it---collaboration gets achievable.

Web 2.0 refers to overall changes in the ways that the software developers and end-users are utilizing the Web post year 2000. This second generation of Web development and design eases communication, information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the Internet.

Now that the concept of Web 2.0 is clear, let’s understand how a Web 2.0 Web site works?

A Web 2.0 Web site

A typical Web 2.0 Web site makes use of the SLATES features---Search (users can search the desired content by keying in suitable keywords), Links (users can browse the URLs containing related information---once you click the link, you get exposed to more information on the linked word/phrase), Authoring (users can add fresh content, archive it, edit it, remove it, and also make it available for edit by others), Tags (users can create tags to categorise and identify content as per the terminology of convenience, which can yield effective results when the search option is used), Extensions (capable algorithms that leverage the Web as application platform and a document server), and Signals (RSS Feeds, which signal the user to new activities on a given post, given that the user has subscribed to the RSS. I hope to write about it and Syndication in a separate article soon.).

Next, let’s look at the applications that utilize these features to address different purposes and needs.

Web 2.0 Applications

Web 2.0 concept has led to development of applications such as wikis, blogs, mashups, folksonomies, social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn), and video-sharing sites (e.g., YouTube).

Wiki is a collaborative Web site which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it. It allows multiple users to create, modify, and organize Web page content in a collaborative manner and track the modification to that document. For me, a wiki doesn’t need to be open to everyone for editing. When I say that, the reason is not just the apprehension of defacement, but I would like to avoid anonymous editing. If you are creating and editing document(s) in a group, you might want to know who created what or changed what. Also, suppose if you are a professor who has asked students to work on a wiki as part of their class assignments, you would want to distinguish which students participated and which did not. In conclusion, I think a wiki is useful for collaborative editing, quickly and easily updating content, and easily finding content through searching and browsing.

Blogs bring together different informative elements that deliver related information. These elements include text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most of the blogs are primarily textual; however, depending on the predominance/focus of elements in a blog, it can be termed as artlog (art), photoblog (photographs), sketchblog (sketches), vlog (videos), MP3 blog (music), and podcasting (audio). Blogs are usually dedicated to some purpose; for example, some provide commentary or news on a particular subject while others are personal online diaries. Microblogs feature very short posts. Users can visit blogs by different authors and leave their comments, which often lead to discussions.

Mashup is a content aggregation technology---from the Web development perspective, it can be understood as a Web page or application that combines data and/or functionality from two or more external sources (such as different Web sites) to create a new service. In layman terms, you can say that a mashup is an application that runs by integrating the data, features, and/or applications of two or more Web sites; and the result is new knowledge/service that is processed from the existing old knowledge/service. For example, a sales strategist can mash-up Google maps with the sales of a particular product (in a particular city, for a given time period). This mashup can give, to the sales strategist, an exact picture of where the sales is at peak and where it is least and the strategist can devise a sales strategy accordingly.

There are two types of mashups, Web-based and server-based. Web-based mashups use the user's Web browser to combine and reformat the data; on the other hand, for the server-based mashups, a remote server analyzes and reformats the data and transmits it to the user's browser in its final form.

The technologies used by mashups to combine content and functionality from a variety of sources include RSS and Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML)---we will talk about them in the article soon.

Folksonomy is a portmanteau of folk and taxonomy. It is a type of classification system for online content, which an individual or a group user (folk) creates by tagging information with freely chosen keywords (taxonomy). This practice is also called collaborative or social tagging. Classifying information is one aspect of tagging; the other one is finding information. Therefore, the tags are also provided with metadata so that they are found easily.

Social networking sites provide a platform to connect like-minded people with similar interests. The users of any social networking site can connect with other members in the online community through messaging options such as mails and chats, file sharing, discussion forums, and so on. Social networking gives the users an opportunity to update themselves of what others in the group are up to. Although people can be in touch with each other through mails and messenger services, the idea of having an independent capsule of networking with friends wherein you can get and share updates with many people at once gained popularity post 2005. Social networking sites, now, are a popular means of collaborating and networking between friends, associates, and colleagues.

Video-sharing sites are the Web sites on which users can upload and share their videos. Users can upload a wide variety of user-generated videos such as movie clips, mobile videos, TV clips. Depending on the access rights, everyone or selected group of people can view the videos however you need to register in order to upload the videos.

Now that we have talked about the applications that are a result of the Web 2.0 concept, let’s take a look at the technologies that have enabled these applications and helped turned the Web 2.0 concept into reality.

The Technical Perspective

Technologies

Technologies such as Ajax, RSS, and XHTML/CSS (Cascading stylesheets) are the core of Web 2.0.

Ajax

Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is not a technology itself but it refers to the use of a group of technologies used to create rich Internet/Web applications. This broad group of technologies can be used to implement a Web application that can get data from the server at the backend/background without letting the display or the behaviour of the front/existing page get affected---this is the asynchronous aspect to Ajax. Google maps are a good example of Ajax application.

Ajax is a tool for giving Web applications the type of rich functionality that desktop applications are known for---while using this application, you can seamlessly move around; only the link that you want to explore opens the door to further navigation and rest of the links remain as is---the whole parent page does not refresh every time you click a link on it. So, Ajax is being used to develop Web sites that mimic (looks and work like) desktop applications. When I say that, there are two aspects to consider: (1) there is seamless movement that the user might experience using the navigation of an Ajax---only the portion that you want to explore will open and rest will remain static, and (2) you can work offline on an Ajax-based Web site. To execute point (1), the backend takes the request to update only a particular portion (on the Web site) and processes it to update/reload only specific portion of the page and rest of the page does not reload/refresh. This is how Ajax allows the Web sites to process asynchronous requests and overcomes the poor bandwidth usage and long load time problem associated with traditional Web sites (in which for every little request, the whole Web page reloads).

RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (a.k.a. Web Syndication). Most often, you can observe RSS feeds icon available on the Web pages of different Web sites---these icons are clickable. If you like a particular Web site and want to know updates as and when they happen on it, clicking the RSS icon will initiate the subscription process. After subscribing to the Web site, you will be notified of updates to that particular Web page.

RSS is used to publish frequently updated content in a standardized format---the content can be in the form of an audio, a video, blog entries, or news headlines. RSS feeds are read by software called the RSS reader, or feed reader, or aggregator. Such a software can be Web-, desktop-, or mobile-based. The RSS reader checks the Web links you subscribed to, downloads the updates, and provides the user interface for those updates.

RSS benefits publishers (by helping them syndicate the content automatically) as well as users/readers (by allowing them to subscribe to updates on their favourite Web site or to aggregate RSS from multiple Web sites into one place).

CSS

CSS stands for cascading stylesheets. It separates the content from its presentation. Web 2.0 is about making the Web more user-friendly; herein, the user need not worry about the HTML coding. CSS separates the coding (the HTML part) with the presentation (the XML part). CSS can be understood as a language that directs the presentation of content written in a markup language.

Nowadays, most of the Web pages are written in HTML or Xhtml. If you are an author, you can link your document (written in any markup language such as HTML or XHTML) to a CSS stylesheet, which will govern the presentation of the Web site---e.g., CSS will clearly establish fonts, colors, boundaries, layouts, and background styles for different heading and sections. The CSS usually gets stored in the user’s browser cache; as a result, the download speed and data transfer over the network becomes faster. However, after publishing, there is a possibility that your readers use a different stylesheet, may be one on their laptop, to override what you wrote. Looking it from a user’s perspective, you can use your own, familiar, and convenient stylesheet if you wish to overwrite the publisher’s CSS.

CSS provides two components to the Web sites: (1) scalability and (2) ease of building further. The ease of scaling up and building further is possible because a single change of element in the CSS changes the presentation across the Web site.

CSS also allows the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different publishing media, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader), and on Braille-based, tactile devices.

In Conclusion

With all the concepts, applications, and technologies associated with and revolving around Web 2.0, I see Web 2.0 as a medium through which information source has the possibility of remaining “Dynamic.” With Web 2.0, the information source is evolving just as learning is. I also see Web 2.0 as performing the role of learning in true sense, involving collaboration and free sharing of ideas leading to constructive education---a type of education that evolves with time, participation, and effort---not the one that is static and refuses to build on.