Tasks 3 & 4: RSS and blog search engines

Welcome to the second assignment post for the Technology 2.0 challenge! If you've made it this far, congratulations! If this is your first time here, don't worry, you still have plenty of time to complete all 23 challenges! Last week, we had some problems, but through e-mail and chat (and maybe with a little help from your friends?) we've got it all figured out. Blogging will only get easier the longer you do it. So now, on with the next tasks!

Task 3: RSS and Bloglines

You might have noticed while you were exploring your blog, something that said RSS or Atom. Have you ever seen this symbol () in your browser, or on a website while you were surfing? These are all signals to let you know that a site has an RSS feed. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication", which allows for the easy delivery of web publications to something called an "aggregator". Instead of having to visit a website to check if it has been updated, sites with an RSS feed can send their updates to anyone who has subscribed to the feed. RSS feeds are written in a programming language called XML, and while you don't need to know that exactly, you do need to know that's why you cannot just read an RSS feed directly. Browsers used to show the files in all their XML glory, which looked like a whole lot of nonsense in your browser window. Now, newer browsers like Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0 will tell you that you have clicked on an RSS feed, and that you need an aggregator to read it.

Here are some links that also provide introductions to RSS.

• CNET Video: RSS – Feel the Need for Feeds (3:32) – a good over view of what RSS is and the benefits to users.
  
  
• Feed Me: A gentle introdustion to Internet feeds - a good tutorial from Palinet, a library cooperative

Before we explore RSS feeds, we must set up our aggregator. Some browsers have their own RSS aggregators (they might call them newsreaders), but for this program I suggest you open up a bloglines account. There will be some bloglines features we will be playing with later.

To get your bloglines account:

* Go to http://www.bloglines.com.

* Click the "Sign Up" link in the middle of the page, or you can also click on the "register" link up in the right hand corner of the page.

* Fill in the required information on the sign-up page. Make sure you type in your e-mail correctly, as bloglines will send you an e-mail verifying this address.

* When you get the email, click on the link it gives you to verify your address.

Now that you have an aggregator, we're going to add all of the participant blogs to your account! (Note: Many of the newer browsers will do these steps for you. At the end of the address bar, the little orange RSS square should appear when an RSS feed is available somewhere on the page. Click it, and follow the instructions to add it to your bloglines account. You may want to try this before you go on to see if your browser will cut out some steps for you.)

* Go to a participant blog (the list is up on the right hand side of this blog).
* Somewhere on the page (most of the time, it is the very bottom) there should be a link to the RSS feed. The majority of ours say "Subscribe to : Posts (Atom)".
* Right click on this link and choose "copy link" from the menu.
* In your bloglines account, click on "Add" in the left-hand sidebar.
* Right-click in the text box on the next page that loads, and select copy from the menu.
* After the RSS feed address shows up in the text box, click on the "Subscribe" button.
* If you want, you can play with some of the settings on the next page. You don't have to, though, and can just click the "Subscribe" button again.

This blog post on another blog gives wonderful step-by-step instructions complete with pictures if you're having trouble. They also walk you though some shortcuts, like what to do when you can't find the RSS link, but are pretty sure they have a feed. (Hint: You can try just typing the blog's web address into the subscribe text box to see if the RSS feed comes up automatically. If you go to one of our participant blogs without the RSS link, try this approach.) I highly recommend going here, if only to see some of the other things you can do with bloglines.

Task 4: Blog search engines

So now that you have an RSS aggregator, you need more things to read! Of course, you could always just go to my public feeds to see what cool tech blogs I'm reading, but maybe you want something a little more personalized. A good way to do this is to use a blog search engine. Blog search engines work just like regular search engines, except they specifically target blog entries.

* Bloglines has its very own search, found in the top right hand corner of the page.
* Technorati is another blog search engine, which includes a tag search. Don't worry it you don't understand the concept of tagging just yet, we'll deal with that in another task.
* Blogger also has its own blog search.

Click around these sites and pick out some more feeds to add to your aggregator. If you don't like them, you can always unsubscribe.

After you have added several sites to your bloglines account, find your public feeds address (in the right hand window at the top there should be a "share" tab. Click there, and down at the bottom of the page there should be a web address under the heading "/public". That is your public feeds address. It shows all of the feeds you have listed as public. [to change a public feed to a private feed, click on the feed, and click "edit subscription" in the top right hand corner. There you will get the option to change it to private.]) and post it on your blog! We want to see what blogs you can't live without!

Made it this far? Great! Only 19 more to go!