42 Quirks

[level: absolute layman]

So you’ve got yourself a feed-reader, eh? And you have no clue how to go about it? Well, let’s work this through step-by-step, through simple questions and answers:

1. What is RSS?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. Take each word on its own. Rich - Lots of information. Site - your web site Summary - smaller understandable chunks. Put them together and you get, straightaway:

“Lots of Information (from) your web site (put into) smaller understandable chunks.”

RSS also stands for Really Simple Syndication. To understand this seemingly difficult term, consider only the word syndication. Syndication means sharing or publication of material/resources into an extended network. The concept arose from cartoonists, writers and such newspaper related people ’syndicating’ their content for different publications.

RSS is the online method of sharing/syndicating content created by us. It is an efficient distribution system, that allows you to ‘pull’ content , instead of ‘pushing’ it like email, for example. The flexibility of XML allows better content management and allows developers to play with the feeds in more ways than you can imagine.

Geeks, head over to Wikipedia’s RSS page, and BBC’s RSS page.

2. What are Feed Readers or RSS Readers?

Ok, now we have lots of information pulled from your site. The question is what do we do with it?

The immediate answer would be read! And that is exactly what feed readers do. Read your feed. Rather, they allow you to read the feed.

A feed reader the XML equivalent of a browser. A regular browser reads HTML code and displays the information between the HTML tags, as per the formatting defined in the tags. Feed readers read XML information and display the content between XML tags.

This explanation over-simplifies the RSS/XML concept, but is good enough for understanding purposes, I think.

3. How do I use a Feed Reader (RSS Reader)

Like a browser!

The URL/Location/Address bar of a browser allows you to navigate to a site. Similarly, you point the feed-reader to an RSS feed published by a site. Usaully feeds are publisehed in .xml format, but with user-friendly software like Feed Blitz or FeedBurner (I use this for my site) the feed address can be a lot simple to remember.

Here’s the process to add a blog/website feed into your reader:

1. Look for a link/button called “Add feed“. An input box asking for the feed address will appear.
2. Enter the feed address in this input box. For example, the feed address for this blog is:

   http://feeds.feedburner.com/42quirks

3. The reader will then fetch the contents of the feed (article, individual posts, etc.) and allow you to read the contents online or offline, based on the kind of reader (Web-based or Desktop-based) that you are using.

You’re done!

4. Ok, so I’ve added a feed. What next?

Well, nothing actually.

That’s the beauty of it. With a feed reader, you no longer have to visit the blog for updates all the time. Every time a new post is published, it appears in your feed reader automatically. You can simply read the updated feed (i.e new posts) from inside the reader. You only need to visit the blog if you want to leave a comment.*

You can also chunk your feeds together in logical groups for better reading experience. For instance, some of the categories I user are as generic as ‘humor’, ‘tech-blogs’, ‘poetry’ etc. or quite personal like ‘blogs-of-friends’. You have the liberty to name yours the way you want.

Such chunking is permitted by all readers, though each reader names it differently. Some call it folders, others call it categories, yet others call it channels. The essence of all these terms remains the same - a user-created logical chunk of feeds.

5. What if I can’t connect to the Internet all the time?

Work Offline!

No, I am not kidding. There are desktop-based feed readers, too.A desktop-based reader is a program that runs from your system and polls the internet for feeds whenever you connect to the internet. Akin to an email client, these feed readers connect online and (literally) download entire updated feeds to your local machine.

Those of you who use Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird at work, might know what I am talking about. The workings of a web-based and desktop-based feed readers are the same as web-based and desktop-based email clients. So you are not entirely on unfamiliar territory there.

6. Which RSS Reader should I go for?

There are lot of arguments across the web regarding this one. I personally prefer web-based readers, since I work on different machines at home and work. A web-based reader allows me to keep a track of my feeds in these circumstances, just as a web-based email client.

Among web-based readers, I find Google Reader the best. With a wide array of keyboard shortcuts and the amazing speed that we have come to know and expect from Google, Google Reader beats everything hands-down, IMHO. Rojo and Bloglines come a close second.

Among Desktop-based readers, I haven’t tried many of them, but among those that I tried, Blogbridge (Java-based) and RSS Bandit (.NET based) are a good try. Attensa was interesting, but it crashed my Outlook once too often and out it went.

7. Questions?

Post your questions in the comments section. I think we can have a good FAQ setup here!

Cheers!

*Many publishers have an issue with RSS for this reason. Since most of the sites run on Ad revenue, publishing a feed means losing out on crucial page visits, and hence Ad revenue. Will Feed-vertising be the answer to all this?

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RSS feeds have dramatically changed the way we consume content online. Over the course of time, I have come to subscribe to 90+ feeds of which I manage to read about 20 of them completely.

If there’s one debate that keeps raging across the blogosphere, off and on, it has to be about RSS feeds. Even now, I hear occasional raves and rants about how partial text feeds are irritating and nonsensical, and all that.

What if (this may be a very silly what-if) the choice were left to the user?

What if I as a reader could decide whether I wanted a Partial-Text, Full-Text or Headlines only feed for a given site?

For instance, I’d prefer to have a Headline-only feed for heavy output websites like Slashdot and ZDNet while I’d prefer a full-text feed for sporadically updating sites, like friend blogs.

Alternatively, this can be achieved from the client-side itself, i.e. within the RSS reader. To me, it makes sense to open the feed in three stages:

Headlines >> Partial Text (Excerpt*) >> Full Text

In either of the cases, the publisher must provide a full-text feed.

Of the few readers that I have tried and tested, Google Reader comes close, offering Expanded and Reading views. Combined with keyboard shortcuts, these make for an amazing experience.

At the end of the day, reading RSS feeds is nothing but consuming content, and right now, there are only so many ways to do it.

I have a sneaky suspicion, things will be different soon.

(*caveat: I would define an excerpt as a paragraph or two, having a total of about 5-7 lines at least)

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Until now, the process of consuming content was of a very primitive type - Search and consume. We searched for information using certain keywords and then converted it manually to knowledge. If we wanted to access the information at a later date, we simply printed it out. If we wanted to re-search it (pun unintended) we searched it again! There was no way of storing or retrieving this data for later usage.

Enter del.icio.us, one of the first social applications.

All of a sudden, you could bookmark pages you liked AND store them too! Searching for that page on Shark bites you saw two months ago simply transformed into searching through your list of bookmarks. Your bookmarks could now travel with you wherever you went!! The sharing feature meant that now your friend could easily send you that link to the direct downloads, bypassing all the popups and ads along the way.

The process of consuming information now became three-tiered: Search, Store and Retrieve.

Somewhere between then and now, we instinctively developed a habit of consuming content, gaining knowledge, and stashing it away for further usage. A lot of Web purists call this approach as the River of News approach.

Drink hard, drink deep…

We live in a dynamic world that survives on a River of News.

The River of News concept, as described by Dave Winer, goes something like this:

Instead of having to hunt for new stories by clicking on the titles of feeds, you just view the page of new stuff and scroll through it. It’s like sitting on the bank of a river, watching the boats go by. If you miss one, no big deal.

… which is exactly how we parse our daily newspapers for news! If a story is interesting enough, it will be back again the next day. If it ain’t, down it goes…

The River of News concept assumes a relaxed outlook towards the consumption of content by any user. It relies on the fact that if an older item is to be revived, then it will be revived, no matter how or why*.

The only hitch to this concept is the duration of focus in an avergae human. Somehow, the concept of a limited attention span has seeped on to the Web. Conversations (a.k.a posts, articles, etc.) have a specific life span depending upon a variety of factors, ranging from authority to popularity. The previous post touched upon four of these factors that I personally belive to be important.

As the river of news concept washes the Webosphere, the content generated by users (erm, I mean, the knowledge shared by the netizens) becomes outdated as soon as the attention-span of the article ends. For some posts, the span is as short as 30 seconds, for others it might last for weeks.** The keep-alive time of the post is enriched by a variety of parameters, with the element of chance also playing a significant role, sometimes.

The Bottom-line: Find, not search

Traditional Search Engines search for content based upon classifications of keywords and various natively built algorithms. Earlier, when the internet was an array of ‘webmaster-maintained’ static displays, search engines had to be relevant. In the days to come, I foresee the River of News flooding the Blogosphere: Freshness of results will definitely be paramount, then.

The trade-off between freshness and relevancy is one of the factors that will see a good sound debate in the days to come. This, unless the Blogging trend tapers off suddenly instead of continuing to rise.***

One question I have purposefully (and successfully) avoided so far is this: Will we be able to match people to keywords?

A search engine will match content to your keywords. But there are three Shrikant Joshis and many Shrikants and many more Joshis who are regular bloggers. How do you differentiate them? Again, what happens when you are looking for a solution to a problem? Would search engines in the (near?) future also throw up results like:

“5 user(s) can solve your problem! Do you want to hire them?”

More importantly, if they did, would you believe them?

Footnotes:

*One of my reasons for posting this post so late (inspite of my previous assurances) was to check if there was any interest I could generate, and how it varied with time. However, I miscalculated one of the most important aspects. Subscriptions. Since I never had any audience to begin with, there was no way I could anticipate anything. That’s called counting your results before you have keywords.

** Wondering what category my posts fall into? Well, somewhere close to the 30 second limit.

***For more details read David Sifry of Technorati

Technorati Tags: Search Engines, Tags, River of News, Future

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Part II - I Seek You, and your meta-data, too…

What does making sense out of data mean?

In Search Engine terms, it would refer to contextualizing the huge chunk of uncontextual data that is the World Wide Web into information and eventually knowledge. To me, as a human, it simply means tagging certain keywords to any given chunk of data (e.g. a lecture, a passage, a book, a chapter, a conversation) in order to be able to recall it at any time - especially, when one of these keywords is mentioned.

For instance, the conversation in the previous post was about a traveller, (an out-of-towner) looking for directions to a tobbacconist. As I keep reminding myself, Web 2.0 is not a product, it is a process. The process has a lot of conversational threads that keep getting picked and dropped as newer and more interesting threads or new participants appear in their place.

So what would a contemporary Search engine have to consider in Web 2.0?

‘Weight’ing for Information.

From being a static display of items-for-sale behind elegant window panes, the Internet slowly transformed into a bazaar of sorts, with hawkers all around the place plying their wares. The markets grew to accomodate the new and the old. With the advent of Web 2.0, contextualization of information became the norm and not an option.

It all began with a nifty bookmarking site called del.icio.us that allowed you to access your favorite sites across the web. Technorati extended the concept to Blogs and induced bloggers to ‘tag’ their posts with their choice of keywords/tags.

With the Web evolving like a democracy, the obvious question of authority in the Web-democracy arose. Which voice among the loud babble was to be trusted? As the web evolved, so did the concept of it’s franchise. Only, in this virtual reality, links were deemed votes and tags were your campaign ads. Let’s take a quick look at the foru weights that influence your vote.

1. Tags - Powerful Keywords

Each tag is a keyword that associates a particular context, a topic, with a given chunk of data.

2. Time - The ‘other’ Long Tail

All topics & data have a peak presence time. The freshness of a particular keyword is of prime importance in its influence.
Consider this simple example: When Iraq was attacked, almost all of the Search Engines across the world were buzzing with Search queries consisting of corresponding keywords, viz., “Iraq” “attack”. The “hotness” of the Search cooled down as the days progressed, as the world got other topics to discuss about.

3. Trust & Authority

Even in flat hierarchies like the Internet there are obvious postitions of Trust and Authority. People who blog well, and blog often gain a large following, and effectively, the crucial element of Trust.

4. Authenticity

A news on a Microsoft blog would obviously be rated higher in all terms than a news quoting a “trusted Source at Microsoft”. The only exceptions to this rule are:

• The news is a really good bit of juicy gossip - like a rant or a ‘leaked’ secret
• The blogger has high levels of Trust & Authority

There’s a common thread that binds all of these.. Do you see it yet?

(To be concluded)

Note:
I profusely apologise for disappearing from the Blogging scene, all of a sudden. I was forced into a short hiatus by unforeseen circumstances. We updated our website platform to a new version, recently. although the beta is pretty stable, we are still working on a better UI. As a result, I had to spend some sleepless nights and a few Blog-less weeks.

Once again, my sincere apologies for the same…

Technorati Tags: search, search-engine, tags, web2.0

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Part 1: Search and the Web 1.0: Gorblimey!

Those of you who reached here through Google, Yahoo or MSN are probably laughing as you read this. But do go on, there’s more.

(Un)common Recurring Searches

Often our searches are simple keywords crafted with central themes in mind:

• A name (e.g. Shrikant Joshi or Performancing)
• A topic (e.g. Corporate Communications)
• A context (e.g. “Spanish Omelette” +recipe)

Some of us might even burden the spartan box (or in the old days, the Butler) with an entire question. The faithful zombie then crawls its way through the innards of the webs, looking for that occasional diamond stashed away in the back alleys. Usually, in the common cases such as the ones defined above, results are returned in the correct context of our request. Often, the SERPs also throw results that are related yet not within context.

Robert Scoble’s post on Optimization had this line that caught my attention:

It all starts with the blog. Now, why can’t I put my blog on the map? When you go to Live.com and search on “Scoble” why can’t I customize my results there with more information for you?

Well, I don’t agree wholly.

Search for my name on Google. There are at least three different people called Shrikant Joshi who turn up in the top 3. We keep exchanging the first three ranks. And all of us are pretty active bloggers it would seem. The see-sawing of rankings in the Organic Search results is not a matter of concern for me. Nor do I want to customise these search results so that I would get more result-space.

I am not a key-word

What are search engines? Simply speaking, search engines are content-aggregators assigned the additional job of classification. As humans we need to have everything classified into a taxonomy so as to facilitate recollection. Our knowledge depends upon storage which in turn depends upon collection and classification of data. Classification helps recollection and hence improves perceptive retention of knowledge.

Or, in simple words:

The more you know, the wiser you are. Hence, classify and remember.

Similar to how we retain knowledge, Search Engines classify the data they crawl according to keywords. A huge index is built up and referenced and cross-referenced until all the possible avenues of keywords linking to pages and vice-versa are covered. But you probably know all that and more already.

Keywords, mmmm… Aah!

The next step would be making sense out of the data, which eventually leads to contextualization. Don’t get it? Well, simply put:

“A search engine’s job is to make sense out of all that data.”

Let’s take a simple case. Someone in your town happens to own a convenience store named Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Let us imagine that an outsider in your city is searching for it. Here’s how the conversation would go:

Outsider: “Where can I find a convenience store?”
You: “That would have to be Uncle Tom’s cabin. Go straight down for about two blocks and then take a left. It’s right across the street.”
Outsider: “Would I be likely to get some cigarettes there?”
You: “Oh! If you simply wants cigarettes, there a tobacconist just round the corner!”

A normal conversation, eh? Well, let’s take a look at it again. Only this time, we’ll look at it the way a search engine would. Let’s insert some key words into it for understanding the flow of the conversation:

1. “Where can I find a convenience store?”
[New Search Query, keyword: "convenience store"]
2. “That would have to be Uncle Tom’s cabin. Go straight down for about two blocks and then take a left. It’s right across the street.”
[Response keywords:"Uncle Tom's cabin", "directions"]
3. “Would I be likely to get some cigarettes there?”
[Refine Search Query, keyword: "cigarettes"]
4. “Oh! If you simply wants cigarettes, there a tobacconist just round the corner!”
[Response keywords: "Tobacconist","Round the corner"]

With me so far? Here’s the stumper:

If each of these sentences corresponded to an entire blog-post in the Blogosphere, how would you track this conversation? How would you rank each post with respect to the keywords. Would those keywords be enough to cover all aspects of the conversation? Would you call those keywords as appropriate descriptors of the conversation? Where would these posts appear in SERPs for the combined keywords {”Your Name” +directions}

To be continued…

Disclaimer:
I am no Search Engine Expert. These opinions are simply my $0.02 worth. Or may be less.

Technorati Tags: search engine, optimization, keywords, web2.0, content, context

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