Google has launched an enhanced blog tracking service that helps people mine a growing mountain of online commentary for gems worth reading.


The Google Blog Search tool  competes with Techmeme, Polymeme, and other memetrackers that sort and organize blog posts into categories.

Open Regulations, a website for government regulations. Their content is now available via RSS feeds.

Clickbank RSS feed generator allows you to generate a keyword feed using your affiliate ID. You can display the feed as HTML to generate sales or simply syndicate the feed.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is providing an RSS feed of missing children.

Ford Motor Company is now providing RSS Feeds. You can easily stay abreast of news about our products and services by having Ford news the RSS feeds cover things from design to safety.

There is a new RSS feed to email delivery service. Checkout Feed My InBox.

There are some new RSS feed directories at:

FeedBees - Has more than 100,000 RSS feeds.  

RSS Mountain - Free RSS directory that is searchable.

FeedSee - Human edited RSS directory.

More RSS Search Engines and Directories

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has started a blog, candidly telling of being at risk for Parkinsons Disease and plugging his wifes genetic testing start-up firm.


While Brin is no stranger to news-making webcasts and online press announcements, he made a blogging debut Thursday by sharing personal musings in a post at the Blogger weblogging website Google bought in early 2003.

complete article

kindlefeeder.com is a service for Amazon Kindle owners that lets you aggregate your favorite feeds and have them delivered to your Kindle in a convenient, easy-to-navigate format. You can also have your feeds delivered to your Kindle automatically on a schedule.

kindlefeeder.com is currently in beta. During the beta period, the service will be free to use, apart from Amazon's $0.10 wireless delivery fee.

Attempting to stay current on the latest search engine algorithm changes or search optimization tactics can be overwhelming for webmasters attempting to juggle it all. With this in mind, we have put together a list of the industrys best Search Marketing blogs. These blogs are current and discuss important issues related to search engine optimization and search marketing. Subscribe to the search marketing blogs RSS feeds, or visit their website regularly to stay current regarding the latest search news.

Best Search Marketing Blogs

The State of California has added a collection of RSS feeds. The feeds cover the gamut from California politics to the courts.

State of California RSS Feeds

Have you ever been curious about what the politicians and political pundits read? Google has released information on the news sites read by McCain, Obama and political journalists. See articles the campaigns and political pundits are sharing with Google Reader this election season. Check out the Google PowerReaders.

The American Institute of Physics have added a bunch of RSS feeds. They cover the American Institute of Physics Journals and news feeds.

Blogs played a significant role in the 2004 election, but the 2008 race has seen even newer types of communications play a significant role. Obama has reached young voters through text messaging and social-networking sites like Facebook, while incendiary speeches by his former preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright were viewed widely on the YouTube video site.

This was an interesting article that was written a number of months ago:

The staggering distribution numbers, through channels like iTunes, YouTube, or podcasting websites, indicate that technology could play a critical role in the upcoming elections. Technology could be the deciding factor in the 2008 US Presidential race, and while distribution has never before been as accessible as it is to todays politicians and political candidates, politicians have far less control over the news and media than their counterparts in previous years.

The curious need not look any further than YouTube to find the latest political constituents being haunted by their own words and dogged by their past missteps. Todays politicians have far less control of the news media and messages associated with their candidacy.

The Internet and technology is positioned to play a huge role in elections. Whether that truly occurs remains to be seen.

Influencing Politics through The Internet

The 2008 DNC is expected to be the most blogged-about political convention in history.That, of course, is just a small segment of the estimated 15,000 total media in attendance. Nonetheless it is worth noting.

Google will be pampering bloggers and tutoring US policy makers at Democratic and Republican national conventions as Internet culture flexes growing political muscle.


The Internet giant is joining news-ranking website Digg and blogger groups to set up a Big Tent for media and delegates at the Democratic convention next week in the US state of Colorado. The 8,000-square-foot center will feature a public area with kiosks for uploading videos to Google-owned YouTube and demonstrations of services offered by Google.

This new PowerPoint Templates website provides RSS feeds for each category. As the category updates the new PowerPoint Presentation appears in the topical RSS feeds. The PowerPoints cover a variety of topics for all kinds of presentations and they can be used with any version of PowerPoint.

PowerPoint RSS Feeds

American Physical Society is now providing content using RSS feeds. The feeds cover a few topics of strong current interest and draw from all of the APS journals.

The FBI recently expanded their news feed offerings on the FBI.gov website to include wanted fugitives and missing children. The feeds, which enable subscribers to get new FBI content and site updates delivered to them, include the popular Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list and Most Wanted Terrorists list.

IM Feeds is a new service that allows you to get RSS feeds via instant messaging. IM Feeds delivers RSS updates directly to your Instant Messenger.

With the economy in a questionable state, everyone is looking for a good deal. Savvy business owners have jumped at the opportunity to carve out a niche for themselves in the struggling economy. Coupon and Deal-Of-The-Day websites have become extremely popular. Everyone is getting into the action, from large conglomerate websites to small specialty shops, and many now have some sort of Deal-Of-The-Day special where an item is offered at a significant discount for a specified and limited period of time. While the Deal-Of-The-Day websites were originally designed to capture impulse purchasers, many financially-conscious penny-pinching shoppers are now monitoring these sites regularly, in search of good deals on products they might need.

Where to Find the Deals!

Web Easy is website design software that allows you to create a great website in one hour with drag-and-drop simplicity. WebEasy includes everything you need in one box to create your ideal website with built-in templates and e-commerce tools.  Web Easy is featured on Software Deal of the Day at a 40% discount for only 24 hours!

A new version of Googles Blogger blog publishing service that went into public testing last week has generated some concerns among users, especially regarding a significant revamping of the tool for composing and modifying postings.


In the official Google blog entry detailing the post editor changes, many testers have commented that the revamped tool differs too much from the current one, causing confusion, frustration and mistakes.

complete article

Webmasters are given the advice that they must attract links, but the key is not just to attract links... they need to attract good links. But what is the perfect link? The search for the perfect link need not be a quest in vain. Consider the following when attempting to attract links...

The Traits of a Perfect Link

I thought this was rather funny but sadly true -- a different kind of RSS.

A look at a common affliction among domainers.

Thousands of people suffer daily from Repetitive Statistics Syndrome (RSS). RSS is an obsessive compulsive disorder that involves checking revenue statistics from programs such as Google Adsense and domain parking multiple times a day. RSS sufferers know that checking their statistics repeatedly will not increase the final revenue number at the end of the day, but they can’t bring themselves to stop checking stats. This article will discuss RSS and what can be done about it.

History of RSS. RSS began with early incarnations of public e-mail services such as AOL and Prodigy. People who were new to e-mail would check their accounts multiple times each hour to make sure they quickly knew if one of their friends had forwarded a funny picture of a cat to them or if they needed to send out a chain letter to 7 people in order to stave off bad luck. This was called RES for Repetitive Email Syndrome.

complete details of overcoming RSS

Whoisi is a central site that allows users to add people and their associated web feeds, and then track any number of these people and their feed items using a follower model.

In Whoisi, any visitor to the site can define a person or an identity, and add the feeds associated with that person for other users to find and follow. To prevent vandalism, there is a revision history so that changes can be reversed.

Website usability is more than just a good navigational structure. A large number of people have visual or hearing disabilities, so you should design your website in ways that allow those with either minor or significant impairments to view and navigate your web content. The following tips will help expand your websites usability so that all users, regardless of their sensory perception and abilities, are able to take advantage of your web content...

Take Website Usability to the Next Level

Web templates expedite the process of setting up a new website. The idea behind a web template is that it will save time with the creative design and layout process.

In the business world, time is money; hence, using templates can save money. It can be a challenge to find a web designer for hire, and quite often the designers schedule will not always mesh with the needs of a small business. Time rarely controls a web graphic designer. Artists are, well, artistic, and don't necessarily work by the clock. Instead, they work when inspiration strikes, which can be problematic when there are deadlines to meet. Templates are ready-made, and can be easily edited, allowing you to instantly create a website.

In addition, webmasters that may lack adequate graphic or design skills can quickly and easily create a website themselves, simply by editing and customizing the existing HTML layout in a web template. And locating a themed web template takes far less time than attempting to create a layout and graphics from scratch. Web templates also remove any coding issues. This is especially helpful to webmasters who are just starting out and just learning HTML coding.
The bottom line is that webmasters who use web templates will have their websites up and running much quicker.

Why Should You Use Web Templates?

The Software Industry Conference is coming to Boston July 17th through 19th, 2008. This exciting event, now in its 18th year, will be held at the Boston Marriott Quincy in Quincy MA.

The Software Industry Conference features three days of informative sessions that cover a wide range of subjects of interest to software developers. There will be sessions on marketing, foreign markets, ecommerce, outsourcing development, copyrights and trademarks, and much more.

The Software Industry Conference provides lots of time to network with other attendees. Thursday evening there is a night of fun, excitement, food, and beverages sponsored by Digital River, always a highlight of the conference. Friday evening features an Exhibit Night with vendors in over 20 booths and food and beverages for all.
The Software Industry Conference is the premier software marketing event of the year.

Getting started with podcasting is a relatively inexpensive venture. The equipment and software required for podcasting is inexpensive for a business contemplating podcasting as a new marketing and communication adventure.

Required Equipment
1. A Computer Capable of Recording Audio
2. Recording and Editing Software (RecordForAll Suggested - US$39.00)
3. Podcast Creation Software (FeedForAll Suggested - US$39.00)
4. A Microphone
5. A Recording Location (quiet, without any echo)

Reaping The Podcasting Rewards

The Associated Press, following criticism from bloggers over an AP assertion of copyright, plans to meet this week with a bloggers group to help form guidelines under which AP news stories could be quoted online.


Jim Kennedy, the APs director of strategic planning, said Monday that he planned to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it.

complete article

Webmasters are given the advice that they must attract links, but the key is not just to attract links... they need to attract good links. But what is the perfect link? The search for the perfect link need not be a quest in vain. Consider the following when attempting to attract links...

The Attributes of a Perfect Link

Podcast consumers are more likely to have a college degree and earn in excess of $75,000. They are also more frequent online shoppers and spend more money online than other Americans. These consumers are also adverse to interruption based advertising and use pop up blockers, SPAM filters and other tools to block out commercials.

Podcast Consumer Profile

Embed a Dynamic Feed Control on your web page and let your users see customized views of the feeds. Customize how the dynamic feed control should be displayed, and the Google wizard will write the code for you.  

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency has added RSS Feeds. Now you can receive emergency alerts via RSS.

Government web sites have been a joke for almost as long as there have been web sites. They tend to be slow, clunky, and far behind their private-sector counterparts. All three presidential candidates have signaled that they want the federal government to make better use of the Internet, but there is a real danger that the next administration will simply add another coat of lipstick to a very ugly pig.

A new paper from researchers at Princeton University suggests a different strategy.

The focus should be on providing raw public data such as regulatory decisions, Congressional votes, and campaign finance data in open, structured formats such as RSS and XML. This raw data would be made freely and publicly available to anyone who wanted it and could be used for any purpose.

complete article

Paul Bradshaw is not a psychologist. He just plays one on the Internet.

Calling himself an amateur psychotherapist to the blogerati, the U.K. blogger has identified common psychological complaints of bloggers and social media addicts as they adapt to the demands of new technologies.

Among them:
-- Comment guilt: Feelings of worthlessness and frustration that they don't comment more frequently on other peoples blogs.

-- Twitter rage: Extreme psychopathic episodes directed at microblogging service outages (the most acute case currently being studied: TechCrunchs Mike Arrington)

-- Twitterhoeia: The uncontrollable urge to share mundane experiences with Twitter followers (Arrington currently taking part in a case study)

-- Six degrees of separation syndrome (also known as Robert Scoble multiple personality disorder): The delusion that he or she is just one friend removed from anyone else in the world and compulsively adds friends on social networks

-- RSS reader Sisyphus complex: No matter how much time is spent checking RSS reader, there are still 8,978 posts unread.

complete article

Pheedo, the leading provider of RSS advertising, today announced that Gawker Media, publisher of several of the webs most popular media properties including Gizmodo and Lifehacker, experienced more than 300 percent growth in RSS advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2008.

complete release

China is now home to the worlds largest number of Internet and mobile phone users, and their hunger for quake news is forcing the government to let information flow in ways it has not before.

Almost nonstop, the uncensored opinions of Chinese citizens are popping up online, sent by text and instant message across a country shaken by its worst earthquake in three decades.

PC Mag takes on the question of who owns content, especially where RSS Feeds are concerned:

Every day people put virtual truckloads of information into the public domain. Books are published. Newspapers printed. A lot of that ends up on the Internet as well, along with the words of bloggers and other online denizens. All of these people make content public so that others can hopefully benefit from it.

Once it is out in the public domain, who owns it? Well, the author of course, or in some cases, their employers. That makes sense when we're talking about a web Wage. But sometimes, in order to make it easier for people to find and read the information, it is delivered as an RSS feed. RSS breaks down the information into article-sized chunks and streams it out so that news-reading tools can grab it and display it for users.

Create your own TV RSS Feed using MyTVRSS. Select your favorite shows below, and then click Create feed to generate your own personalized RSS feed. We will then alert you through the RSS feed the day an episode is aired.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which controls 16 federal agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, is engaged in a technological revolution of sorts.

On at least one technological front, the office on Tuesday broke out an RSS feed on its flashy, newly designed public web site.

A guide for using RSS feeds for jobseeking.

By their very nature, regularly updated sites that advertise jobs are ideal platforms for RSS technology. The feeds should be categorised or customisable to your interests and always be free for you to access. Jobseeking is an ideal candidate for RSS technology.

more on RSS for Jobseeking

Choosing a domain is one of the first steps in establishing an online presence. Changing a domain after-the-fact can be time consuming, and can be harmful to search engine ranking, so it is best to get it right the first time around. Follow these simple steps to select a domain name that will represent your online brand...

Choose a Domain

The new Dilbert.com offers the poupular comic via RSS Feeds.

A French court has punished web publishers because of snippets of text that appeared on their sites via an RSS reader. It is believed to be the first time that a website operator has been held responsible for content delivered by a third parties RSS feed.

complete article

Follow the latest Marathon news with the Boston Marathon News Feed or the  Google Boston Marathon News Feed.The Boston Marathon is the worlds oldest annual marathon.

Search Engine Land posted an interesting piece that analyzes who the various aggregators count RSS feed subscribers.

Bloglines will count anyone who is currently subscribed to your blog even if they have not viewed your blog feed ever as a subscriber.
Google will count anyone who is currently subscribed to your blog even if they have not viewed your blog feed ever as a subscriber.
Microsofts Live.com does not appear to share subscriber numbers.
Netvibes will count anyone who is currently subscribed to your blog even if they have not viewed your blog feed ever as a subscriber.
NewsGator will count anyone who is currently subscribed to your blog even if they have not viewed your blog feed ever as a subscriber.
Pageflakes will count anyone who is currently subscribed to your blog even if they have not viewed your blog feed ever as a subscriber.
Rojo will count anyone who is currently subscribed to your blog even if they have not viewed your blog feed ever as a subscriber.
Yahoo requires that the subscribed user has viewed (logs into My Yahoo or Yahoo Mail) your feed within 30 days to be counted as a subscriber.

Blogs are now a dime a dozen, and bloggers need to make their blog posts stand out. Developing a blog following is not as easy as it once was. Learn how to write blog posts that attract readers and retain their attention. Follow these guidelines to cultivate readers...

Blog Posts that Attract Attention

While it may still be debatable whether all the major search engines currently employ a duplicate content penalty, all have made it abundantly clear that they do not have any desire to provide search results that rehash the same content over and over. Actively avoid any potential penalties by taking a proactive approach to building unique content.

Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties

Nanowerk, the No. 1 nanotechnology portal, announced that it is offering a set of free nanotechnology news feeds for other websites and content providers.

Organic search results credibility and trustworthiness have always been widely debated. When SEO (define) first became a hot tactic in online marketing, search engines results became littered with spam -- doorway pages, link farms, you name it. Now that the search engines have become smarter and their algorithms increasingly complex, they are much better at weeding out spam.

But how do you define spam? Is it sites that provide no inherent value (e.g., a page full of links or ads) or content that's potentially invalid, unproved, or biased?
The answer to that question probably depends a lot on who you ask.

Clickz Questions Credibility of Blogs

Here is another article from a different source a few months ago:

Credibility online is becoming more and more of an issue. Anyone can have a blog or post to a forum and anyone can edit wiki entries. Web surfers are beginning to comprehend that just because it is in print does not necessarily mean that it is true. In fact, in today's online world, the collective truth might be the closest thing we can get to the real truth. Peer policing and social bookmarking have become common in the online world.

Human nature invariably prompts a level of trust;if it is written, it must be true. We live in a generation where we expect authors, editors and publishers that are qualified to write on various topics. What qualifications are required to post a blog, write an online article, or edit a wiki? Some web surfers may find the answer startling: None. Expertise is no longer a prerequisite. Wikipedia is a popular online reference, that frequently obtains top ranking in search engines as a reference source. How many Wikipedia readers realize that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at anytime, regardless of their qualifications.

Questioning Online Credibility

Performing and perfecting search engine results can save web surfers lots of time and energy. Understanding the nuances of searching allows researchers to immediately drill down and locate the information they are seeking, without having to wade through a myriad of irrelevant search results in the process. The increasing complexity of search engines has made understanding search engines a necessity for those who spend any amount of time online. The following search tips are standards that will work in most of the major search engines.

Use this guide to Perform Better Searches

A Malaysian court has ordered a top blogger and editors of an opposition newspaper to pay 2.2 million dollars in damages over libel claims by a university head, reports said last Thursday.

Syria is cracking down more on Internet use, imposing tighter monitoring of citizens who link to the Web, as well as jailing bloggers who criticize the government and blocking YouTube and other Web sites deemed harmful to state security.

OSHA has implemented Really Simple Syndication Feeds to provide OSHA customers a personal, direct channel for receiving the latest news and information from the OSHA Web site.

LinkedIn is now offering RSS feeds for network updates.

The feature allows users to track updates and connections across their LinkedIn network via their favorite RSS Reader. For example the feed shows when people in your network connect with other people, make recommendations or update their LinkedIn status.

What defines a good podcast? Make no mistake -- there is a difference between a good podcast and a not-so-good podcast. A high-caliber podcast is much more than just decent content. The sound quality, and the way a podcast is recorded, will impact the value of the podcast as well. Podcast structure and pre-planning are also important; do not skimp on the production, as it too can make or break a podcast.

Top Podcast Tips for a Great Sound

This question appeared on the CBS Website:

I have a question for any RSS gurus out there: Is there a way to set up my RSS feed so that it does not get published immediately?

The answer is yes, you can use FutureRSS a PHP script to schedule the RSS feed. You can prepublish content weeks or even months in advance, knowing that the content will automatically be displayed at the appropriate time.

(read complete question)

The Food Standards Agency website uses a free news feed so it is now even easier to stay updated. The UK Food Standards Agency is equivalent to the FDA in the US.

With little money or manpower, a barely literate 89-year-old Malaysian grandmother running for parliament in Malaysias general election has turned to cyberspace to reach out to her voters with a Facebook profile and her own blog.

complete article

A teen who used vulgar slang in an Internet blog to complain about school administrators should not have been punished by the school, her lawyer told a federal appeals court.


But a lawyer for the Burlington, Conn., school told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday that administrators should be allowed to act if such comments are made on the Web.

Avery Doninger, 17, claims officials at Lewis S. Mills High School violated her free speech rights when they barred her from serving on the student council because of what she wrote from her home computer.

complete article

The 2008 Software Industry Conference  will be in Boston, Massachusetts at the Boston Marriott Quincy from July 17-19, 2008.

The Software Industry Conference is a three day event, that culminates with the Shareware Industry Awards ceremony. There are also dozens of informative, educational breakout sessions covering a wide variety of topics. And if that is not enough there are three nights jam packed with plenty of time to mingle with other attendees, exhibitors, and sponsors including an Exhibit Night featuring the best software development products and services.

Attendee registration is only $199 if you register before April 1st!

When designing a website, it is important that webmasters ask some general questions before they begin the design process...

Website Purpose

The use of technology can define the success or failure of a business. This is no more evident than in the real estate industry. Realtors who flocked to the latest technologies, adopted them, and applied them in order to enhance and sell property, are still prospering.

Real Estate Video Podcast

Who is Evan Williams? The brains behind blogger and twitter. Read his story on Inc. com.

Web Design Elements are topic specific CD ROMs that contain graphics, hiqh quality photographs and web templates about a specific industry. Great solution for small businesses looking for an online identity.

The best blogs and feeds are those that contain unique, fresh, compelling, content. So where do these prolific posters get their ideas? I talked to a handful of bloggers to determine where their inspiration originated for their content.

Not surprisingly, ideas for blog posts or RSS feed items originate or are influenced by other web content. The following are venues for finding your online muse:

Blog Post Ideas

TalkDigger is another Ego Search tool, enter a search word or phrase and subscribe to the feed generated. The feed ill update each time TalkDigger locates the defined keyword online.

Stay up on the elections!

Political Feeds - Locate political feeds and podcasts for politicians.
PolFeeds - Collection of candidate RSS feeds.

The Transportation Security Administration wants to know why we can not all just get along.


So, on Thursday, the agency launched a blog to open a dialog with travelers and to reconcile the perceived need for security with the desire for unhindered transit.

A day after its launch, the site's premiere entry has more than 330 comments. Those posting range from enthusiastic TSA employees who think the blog is a great idea to aggrieved travelers who want their civil liberties restored to an inventor who believes he has the answer to fungal infections arising from checkpoint shoe removal.

complete article

The Church of England said Saturday it will turn to social networking websites and blogs to spread a new twist on Lent this year.

Instead of giving something up in the run-up to Easter, the Anglican church is encouraging Internet surfers to take on new challenges.

Among the ideas posted online will be suggestions like go a day without gossiping and leave a thank-you note for your postman.

How much do you know about web design? Take this web design quiz to find out how much you know about web design... so how much do you know about web design?

This logo website uses RSS feeds, so that as new logos are added to the website consumers know instantly!

Track webpage changes using RSS feeds. Feedity, create RSS feeds for web pages, the feeds update with webpage changes.

Subscribe to the RSS feed and receive notification when any new templates are added to the Webmaster Templates library.

More and more internet users are getting familiar with the concept of RSS feeds and its uses. This has resulted in number of online and offline services to help in better RSS Management. Feedburner and Feeblitz lead the way in RSS Management services.

Many a times you want to read content from different sources. While there are tools to filter RSS feed content, tools to mix, blend and Mash-up multiple RSS feeds are more important. They help you grab multiple RSS feeds and create a single customized RSS feed. Here are 10 tools worth checking out… RSS Mixers

Large selection of popular RSS Scripts  for manipulating and publishing RSS feeds. Filter scripts, prepublish feeds, convert the feeds to html or merge multiple RSS feeds. Also extract information in a database and make a feed.

Software Deal of the Day offers one software application for sale every day at a significantly discounted price.

Software Deal of the Day is a new site that offers software applications at a significantly reduced price for only twenty-four hours. Each day a new software deal is available. If you cannot resist a great deal then Software-DOD.com is for you!

Software-DOD.com features popular software titles. The software discounts range from 10-90% off of list prices, and the software is only available at that price for twenty-four hours! Software-DOD.com also contains second chance offers. The second chance offers are still discounted and designed for those that miss the deal of the day offer, but the second chance offer is not as deeply discounted as the deal of the day offer.

Many of the software applications on the Software-DOD.com website even have trial versions available, which allows website visitors to try the software prior to making a purchase decision.

Interested visitors can preview the applications that will be available on the Software-DOD website for the coming week. Additionally, deals are easy to monitor because RSS feeds are available that contain the daily specials, the second chance offers, and a preview of applications that will be featured on the Software-DOD.com website.

Other webmasters and publishers can also syndicate the Software Deal of the Day offers, and integrate the discount offers into their own websites. Software-DOD.com provides the tools to make the integration process painless for webmasters. The offers will dynamically update each night as the new offers become available. Providing such great software deals are sure to endear webmasters to their website visitors.

Software developers interested in this new distribution channel are encouraged to submit their software applications for consideration. With economic concerns looming individuals and businesses alike are tightening their spending. Software Deal of the Day is a win for every everyone. Additional details available at http://www.software-dod.com

RSS may sound like a distress signal along the lines of SOS, but its real purpose is to make accessing Web information simple. An abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication, it allows you to get all the updated headlines and podcasts in one place, without having to sift through individual Web sites. You can put all your feeds together in an RSS reader, which will become your all-in-one destination for news and information.

Advice for Getting More from RSS

Attempts have been made to create best practice documents and specification clarifications. We felt it would be helpful to provide general guidelines for those constructing an RSS 2.0 feed. In general, the following are guidelines for constructing an RSS feed. It is good to get into the habit of validating the RSS feed, either with software, or with an online validator.

RSS Feed Etiquette

Another collection of interesting RSS Icons.

BidVertiser, a site-targeted pay per click advertising network, has now entered the RSS market by offering web publishers a new way to monetize their RSS/ATOM feeds - BidVertiser Ads for Feeds.

As part of an effort to help bolster its enterprise business and provide more relevant content to users, NewsGator Technologies Inc. today announced that all of its consumer RSS  client applications are now available without charge.

The list of free applications includes NewsGator Inbox, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire and NewsGator Go for Windows Mobile, Blackberry-Java, iPhone and HTML mobile applications, as well as NewsGator Online, the company said. All include free synchronization across the Web, desktop and mobile devices, NewsGator said.

Greg Reinacker, NewsGator chief technology officer and founder, said that the move was driven by the company's desire to boost corporate sales. NewsGator has found that the more individual users run its client products, the easier it is to sell its server-based products, he said.

Article that describes how to pull content from RSS feeds.

Search engines love websites that are continuously updated with fresh content. As a website owner, if you want to achieve or maintain a good search engine ranking, then your goal should be to continually provide updated keyword–based content on a regular basis to your website. Naturally, if you're providing the content yourself, this takes a lot of work. Let me show you how you can get fresh, keyword-based content updated on your site on a daily basis with no work on your part using RSS feeds and PHP, and most of all, the search engines will love it!

Using RSS for Fresh Content

The lens through which viewers receive their news has changed. The images of struggle are no longer frozen in time; technology has helped preserve and personalize these conflicts by producing moving tributes to the conflicts of humankind.

The strife and internal conflicts that marred the globe in 2006 continued into 2007: Mynamar (Burma), Palestine and Lebanon all continue to struggle with internal conflicts in their borders. The differences between 2006 and 2007 are not obvious; however, under close examination, it is evident that several external struggles have been transformed into internal conflicts. In 2006, many countries attempted to influence their neighbors. This was evident with Iran attempting to influence the turmoil in Iraq, and Syria attempting to control Lebanon. Both struggles have evolved into internal personal conflicts in 2007.

2007 Reflections

China has announced tough new rules to crack down on the explosion of audio-visual content on the Internet, reiterating that sex and politically sensitive material will not be tolerated.

Only state-controlled entities will have the right to operate websites that post audio-visual content, according to the rules, placing into doubt whether Chinese will have access to foreign video sharing sites such as YouTube.

complete article

RSSMicro is an RSS search engine. RSSMicro uses ajax and an interactive database to retrieve RSS feeds based on keyword searches.

Top 10 Winners Predicted for 2008
1. Video
2. Healthy
3. Long Tail
4. Buy USA
5. Rich Internet / Interactive Web / Semantic Web / Web Services
6. Aggregate and Attention Data
7. Power of the People
8. Going Green
9. Biometrics and Big Brother
10. Prosthetics / Bionic

Top 10 Losers Predicted for 2008
1. Lead
2. Squat Toilets
3. DRM
4. China
5. Skinny is Out
6. Blockbuster / Netflix
7. Orbo
8. MySpace fell to Facebook
9. Privacy
10. Piracy

Cool Technology Predictions for 2008

Internet Marketing Resolutions for the New Year
Starting a New Year is all about self-reflecting. Most individuals celebrate the incoming year by looking back, determining what goals were met and what goals fell short. Most who have made past resolutions then look forward and resolve to do better in the coming year.

Like any Internet marketer, I have a long laundry list of things that I intend to get to... invariably each year the list grows longer, and rarely do I make any significant headway on new projects, ideas, or marketing techniques. I resolve for that to change in 2008! I have compiled a list of Internet Marketing resolutions for the coming year. If your list is already too long, consider saving time and using the list below.

1. Track and Measure
Before launching any advertising campaigns, be sure to determine how the campaign will be tracked. I will determine exactly how much money we need to make from the campaign in order for it to be effective and worth the effort.

2. Investigate Pay Per Review
I resolve to take a closer look at pay per review websites like PayPerReview, ReviewMe, and PayPerPost and to discern whether the model will be effective for marketing software.

3. Make Video Tutorials
It is time! Being a tad on the shy side, this item keeps finding its way to the bottom of my marketing list. However, it is time to utilize videos and use them as marketing tools, websites like YouTube can help raise awareness of products and help instruct our users.

Internet Marketing Resolutions for the New Year

This is a little late in posting but still worthy of a mention. Webfruits posted Christmas Feed Icons.

ReadWriteWeb posted 2007: The Year in RSS an interesting overview of RSS events over the past year.

You can use ZapTXT to monitor topics on your favorite news sites, classified listings, job postings, blogs, sports teams or just about anything else you can think of. Simply create a feed and recieve notification any time the keyword appears!

According to InfoWorld:

Google is developing an online publishing platform where people can write entries on subjects they know, an idea that's close to Wikipedia's user-contributed encyclopedia but with key differences.

The project, which is in an invitation-only beta stage, lets users create clean-looking Web pages with their photo and write entries on, for example, insomnia. Those entries are called knols for "unit of knowledge," Google said. Google wants the knols to develop into a deep repository of knowledge, covering topics such as geography, history, and entertainment.

NewsGator Technologies, the provider of a desktop RSS news feed reader, has raised $12 million in its fifth round of venture capital, led by new investor Vista Ventures.

Previous backers Mobius Venture Capital and Masthead Venture Partners also participated.

Founded in 2004, Denver-based NewsGator now claims over 1 million users of its service, which is available through partners like USA Today, FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, as well as through corporate RSS readers and via mobile devices.


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The eBooks website has added RSS feeds. Simply select the category and place the appropriate feed into your aggregator.

Bloggers and free speech advocates are calling on prosecutors not to file charges against a teacher arrested for allegedly posting an anonymous comment online praising the Columbine shooters.


Some were disturbed by the post police say James Buss left on a conservative blog, but other observers said it was a sarcastic attempt to discredit critics of education spending.

The suburban Milwaukee high school chemistry teacher was arrested last week for the Nov. 16 comment left on http://www.bootsandsabers.com, a blog on Wisconsin politics.

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The Internet is a bit like the old wild west, and sadly, people often post material about an individual, product, company, or service that is inaccurate or simply nasty. Businesses and individuals alike are struggling with how to best deal with online inaccuracy and defamation. The normal steps for dealing with defamation typically involve litigation, but this is not always realistic for Internet-based situations since the Internet is global, and not managed or governed by any single set of laws.

If you have the good fortune of being located in the same legal jurisdiction as the offending poster and their website hosting company, you might be able to successfully prosecute them; or at the very least, you might be able to get the webpage with the offending material taken down by the website host. Keep in mind that most defamation court cases require that you show that actual harm was done by the offending material, which can often be difficult.

Reputation Management

More and more companies are using RSS as a means to communicate, so having an RSS feed that is professional and well polished will help differentiate your company from your competition. What makes an RSS feed professional? Follow these simple steps to polish your RSS feed and take it to the next level...

1. Feed Image
Add an image to your RSS feed. The image will be displayed by many feed readers each time your feed is displayed. This will help build and reinforce your brand or image in the minds of people who read your RSS feed. Adding an image to an RSS feed is relatively easy, and adds a level of professionalism.

Create Professional RSS Feeds

RSS Feed submission software, RSS Submit, automates the process of submitting your RSS feeds to the RSS search engines. A free evaluation download is available!

Here is a new RSS feed directory. Feedest is a web based aggregation system of feeds.

Here is another RSS to Email service, SendMeRSS is a widget that forward RSS feeds to individual email addresses.

Here is another collection of RSS buttons, so much for standardization ;-)

Article that details 35 Ways to Increase RSS Subscribers the list details how to get more people to subscribe to your blog.

Lookout Software, LLC., a developer of Microsoft Outlook calendar sharing application for users without Exchange Server, OfficeCalendar; and a new AJAX time tracking solution for SMEs, Office Timesheets; announced today that it has acquired RSSCalendar, an online event and calendaring syndication solution.

As employees struggle to read an increasing amount of work-related material, some companies have turned to RSS technology to improve productivity.

With RSS servers and readers designed for workplaces, IT departments set up internal information feeds that employees can subscribe to, a delivery mechanism that, for some information, can be more precise and effective than e-mail.

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This article discusses RSS and gives a huge variation of RSS icon sets and buttons. The idea is that icon design will influence feed subscriptions and adoption.

RSStalker.com provides RSS feeds to track price changes of Amazon.com products. Generate a feed for a single product or for an entire wishlist. Add it to your favorite aggregator and you will be automatically notified when the price changes.

Can, and will, the next generation of politicians exploit the communication mediums available to them? Will the new communication mediums have the power to influence public opinion? Will politicians be the victims of technology, or will they use it to their benefit? Will one party benefit from the use of the technology more than another? All reasonable questions, considering the role technology plays in todays society.

The staggering distribution numbers, through channels like iTunes, YouTube, or podcasting websites, indicate that technology could play a critical role in the upcoming elections. Technology could be the deciding factor in the 2008 US Presidential race, and while distribution has never before been as accessible as it is to today's politicians and political candidates, politicians have far less control over the news and media than their counterparts in previous years.

Technology is Influencing the Future

As with any new technology, blogging has its own jargon. We are all familiar with business blogs and personal blogs. Here are definitions of other types of blogs.

Anonoblog - a blog run by an anonymous author(s). The blog may display some information about the author(s), but not reveal the authors true identity.

Audioblog - A blog that mainly publishes audio files (music or podcasting) sometimes with text and keywords for search engine optimization.

Blawg – Commonly called lawyer blogs. These are generally by lawyers, law students or law professors and focus on commentary about the law.

Blogging Definitions: Types of Blogs

We found some more vista style RSS Buttons that we thought our readers would enjoy.

Successful software wrote about their problems with WordPress and why they hesitate to rely on a third party for their blog.


I was generally very happy with the service, which has been free so far apart from paying a few dollars for the redirect. But when I tried to log into this blog on Wednesday, all I saw were the chilling words account suspended. The blog itself was still up, but I couldn’t log in to change anything or export it. I emailed wordpress technical support and started backing up the text of all the articles I had not backed up already.

Then the images started disappearing from the blog.

Then the blog disappeared altogether, replaced by a message saying that it had been suspended for violations of terms of service.
Apparently wordpress can shutdown your blog at any time without warning, without right of appeal and without giving a reason.

RSS feeds are becoming an essential tool for Realtors, who are struggling in a declining market. Real estate offices that adopt technology as a marketing tool will remain one step ahead of their competition.

Realty and RSS Feeds

At first, Liu Xiaoyuan just fumed when his online journal postings disappeared with no explanation. Then he decided to do something few if any of Chinas censored bloggers had tried. He sued his service provider.

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On Tuesday, Google made yet another move in mobile social networking. This time, the acquisition target was Finnish startup Jaiku, a company that develops a mobile phone application that lets people send messages, view Web feeds, and even blog.

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The Associated Press filed a lawsuit against VeriSign Inc. over its Moreover news aggregation services in a case reminiscent of a dispute between news services and Google News.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Thursday, seeks to stop Moreover, which is owned by VeriSign, from publishing the news content of the Associated Press.

Complete Article

U.S. diplomats are revealing their personal sides on the new State Department blog. Although the blog, launched Sept. 25, has its dull aspects it lives up to its promise of providing glimpses of diplomatic work and what it is like to serve overseas.

According to ARS

China appears to have finally gotten wise to RSS as of late—reports have been popping up from our readers and around the web of not being able to access FeedBurner RSS feeds as early as August of this year. More recent reports tell us that the PSB appears to have extended this block to all incoming URLs that begin with feeds, rss, and blog, thus rendering the RSS feeds from many sites—including ones that aren't blocked in China, such as Ars Technica—useless.

Take this Social Bookmarking Quiz and determine how much you know about the collective voice!

On the internet, power is in the hands of real Americans: the housewife in her living room, the student in his dorm. Rather than creating the perfect ten second sound bite, candidates must let go and have a real conversation. Interactive. Up close and personal. Maybe as candidates are forced back to earth and voters gain a stake in the process, America will become the voice of the unschooled as well as the educated, the poor as well as the rich, men and women of all ages and every race. After all, isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be?

Technology and Politics

Savvy young bloggers in Myanmar are breaking through the military juntas tight Internet controls to post photos and videos of swelling anti-government protests, experts said Tuesday.


The government blocks almost every website that carries news or information about the Southeast Asian country, and even bars access to web-based email.

But an army of young techies in Yangon works around the clock to circumvent the censors, posting pictures and videos on blogs almost as soon as the protests happen.

Complete Article

One of the strangest legal cases in recent months erupted last Friday, but it's one that could have serious ramifications to anyone who posts material online, or even those who find their face in pictures making their way to the web. Get this...

A Texas teenager making a peace symbol with her fingers (or a V) was photographed by her youth counselor, who posted in on the photo-sharing service Flickr. The counselor chose the creative commons license, as many people do, which says that photos can be used in other materials provided they are attributed to the photographer. So Virgin Mobile Australia (the cell phone company) did just that: It grabbed her picture, cropped it, and turned it into an ad campaign.

Complete Article

Accuweather is now offering RSS feeds. My only question is what took so long? There have been tools around for quite some time that can dynamically convertdatabases to RSS feeds. It seems Accuweather was just a little late to the party. Afterall Weather.com has had feeds for dare I say years? I know I should be applauding their efforts because there are of course other weather portals that do not provide RSS feeds, I just have a hard time understanding the difficulty. Weather is a natural for RSS.

OneNetworkDirect and Denise Purtzer layout why RSS is useful to affilates.

Tricking the search engines just does not work. The search engines do not look kindly upon webmasters who attempt to deceive the search engines about the content contained on a webpage.

Common Errors that Kill Search Engine Ranking

SearchEngineLand has posted a great visual diagram that depicts the power of RSS.

RSS feeds offer a unique channel for distributing content that can help expand your audience to people beyond those who visit your web site.

But RSS feeds can also be an important part of a search marketing campaign. Well optimized feeds can also gain prominent placement on search engine result pages, attracting even more traffic.

According to a recent post the Federal Election Commission does not think so --

DailyKos, an influential political Web site that serves as a virtual bulletin board for liberals, qualifies as a media entity exempt from federal campaign finance regulations, the Federal Election Commission said Tuesday.

The FEC said the Web site, operated by blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, cannot be regulated as a political committee and can freely post blog entries that support candidates.

Conservative blogger John C.A. Bambenek had argued in a complaint last month that the site should comply with campaign finance laws because such entries amounted to a gift of free advertising and candidate media services.'

It has been reported that people who are using China Telecom are unable to access FeedBurner feeds. FeedBurner, which was acquired by Google Inc in June of 2007, powers hundreds of thousands of blog, podcast and news feeds. According to statistics as of August 27, 2007,  Feedburner is feeding 535,003 publishers who’ve burned 913,490 feeds.

This article will you how to get fresh content updated on your site on a daily basis with very little work on your part using RSS feeds and PHP.

Tutorial for Providing Dynamic Content Using RSS Feeds

The debate rages on comparing email and RSS feeds. Lets face it their are benefits associated with each and downsides as well. Email and RSS really are different communication mediums and they are designed for different purposes.

RSS Pros
1. Subscriber Control - you choose what you want to receive
2. Privacy - no need to release private information in order to subscribe (in most cases)
3. Scannable - easy to scan, saving time
4. No Filtering Issues - nothing is lost to spam filters
5. Reach - syndication expands a companies reach

RSS Cons
1. Tracking - RSS is very difficult to reliably track
2. Metrics - accurate reporting is near impossible
3. Adoption - RSS adoption is still limited, not everyone has an RSS reader

Email Pros
1. One on One - designed for personalization
2. Compatibility - everyone can send and receive email

Email Cons
1. Spam - emails are lost in spam filters
2. More Spam - noise to sound ratio overwhelming

Perhaps this over simplifies the comparison but it clearly shows that the two communication methods excel in different areas.

Link Bait gets the readers attention here are some tips for demanding attention. Use titles and posts that:

- attack
- humorous
- contrarian (argumentative)
- notable news
- notable resource
- egotistical

Reporters Without Borders criticized the Chinese government for what the press advocacy group considers a move to end anonymous blogging in the communist country.


The government, through the Internet Society of China, recently drafted a pact that was signed by at least 20 major blog service providers in the country, including Yahoo and Microsoft.

The pact stops short [of] the previous project of making it obligatory for bloggers to register, but it can be used to force service providers to censor content and identify bloggers, the group said in a statement. The pact, unveiled Wednesday, signals an imminent new wave of censorship and repression, the group said.

Googles Blogger team this week solved a technical problem with the blog publishing and hosting service and introduced a new feature that gives publishers the ability to upload videos to their sites.

Use your blog to help your website attract traffic. Attention to search engine optimization details could mean the difference between popular and unpopular.

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs

Cyndicate is a new email like RSS reader for the Mac O/S. Manually or automatically download podcasts and enclosures using Cyndicate.

Small Office Australia posted a good Beginners Guide to RSS.

This information guide is intended as my way to introduce the whole concept of RSS to Australians who have heard of rss and would like to know more.

I suspect that as it is around the world, only a very small percentage of people understand and actually use RSS - and Australia is no different. In fact, anecdotal evidence shows that the use of RSS is well under 10%.

The reason behind The Beginner Guide to RSS is that mainstream Australia - even those frequently using the web - are not taking up rss usage in numbers that was hoped for. In other words, there is still a long way to go to educate people on the advantages of using rss to manage their online information. I hope this guide goes some way in helping this along.

This chart contains detailed information about the fields contained in an RSS feed. Feed creators can use this to assist with feed creation.

Every U.S. presidential candidate has a Web site, of course, but when the top Democratic hopefuls were asked on Saturday whether they would appoint a White House blogger if elected, all of them said yes.

You need not look far to find Government RSS Feeds.

Receive notification when new logos become available. Great use for RSS Feeds.

RSS Feeds for Logos

Tricking the search engines just does not work. The search engines do not look kindly upon webmasters who attempt to deceive the search engines about the content contained on a webpage.

1. Cloaking
Cloaking a website is a stealth technique used to provide a copy of a web page to search engines while providing an alternate copy to website visitors. The website copy provided to the search engine is optimized and not always reflective of the real content contained on the webpage.

Common Errors that Kill Search Engine Ranking

During the Blogathon, people update their websites every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight. For this, they collect sponsorships. Pledges can be a flat donation, or a certain amount for every hour the blogger manages to stay awake.

A blog launched this month has teamed with a U.S. senator in an effort to write new broadband legislation, and so far participants have given the process high marks.


OpenLeft.com, a blog focused on liberal issues, has been hosting a wide-ranging discussion on broadband policy since Tuesday. Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and assistant majority leader in the Senate, has joined the discussion, saying he'll use the ideas from OpenLeft to craft broadband legislation.

RSS has the highest value among Web 2.0 technologies, according to a Forrester Research report released Friday.

The research firm surveyed 275 IT decision-makers online between April and June.

Twenty-three percent of those surveyed report substantial business value for RSS. One in three uses RSS for marketing purposes. Podcasting came in right behind RSS, with 21% reporting substantial business value.

By contrast, only 11% said blogging delivers substantial business value. Fourteen percent said their company does not measure Web 2.0 business value at all. Of those that do measure, the majority look at traditional metrics such as ROI and total cost of ownership.

National Geographic News headlines and story summaries are now available via RSS feeds.

GreenPeace has RSS feeds. The RSS feeds cover issues from global warming to genetic engineering.

Financial institutions are reaching out to clients using RSS feeds. While banks and financial institutions are usually slow to adopt new technology, that is not the case with RSS adoption. More and more professionals are using RSS in innovative ways, to stay ahead of their competition.

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