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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This time around, it’s not my fault.

My Web Hosting providers suddenly got into their mind that Blogging was an activity they did not want to allow on their web servers. And for some reason they thought that my YouTube videos were hogging their bandwidth. So they suspended my account.

Just like that.

Without information, without notice, without anything. And this happens right in the middle of a post submission!! No prior intimation, no update, nothing! So I did what anybody would do. Got myself pissed and mailed them immediately. 11 emails and 3 days later, i.e. today they ‘relented’ to my questions and ‘unsuspended’ the site.

Just like that.

In the course of the email exchanges I learnt that my site was blocked because of streaming and blogging activity. Huh? Blogging is a perfectly acceptable activity for a website. In fact I choose to use my blog as a website, instead of the other way round. As for streaming, the only streaming came from the YouTube video, which streams directly from source!

What irritated me further was this line in their Terms of Service Agreement:

Denial of Service: We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason.

That line just absolves them of all liabilities, doesn’t it? So tomorrow, if their system admin turns out to be a BOFH, I stand to lose all my content?

Silly of me to give them ideas, isn’t it? But what irritates me is this fine print in the legalese. Why should one shirk from responsibilities? If it is an error, it IS an error. Accept it like a man, make amends and move on. Is that so difficult to understand?

Sigh, seems like a classic case of the Friday blues to me…

Word about Google’s New Year gift might have reached some of your ears. Digg and Slashdot both ran a story about Google exposing your contacts to the WWW, simply by visiting a malformed page.

Well, here’s a quick roundup of the events in the last 48 hours. Not so much as a time-line, but more of an aggregation:

1. Jan 1st 2007, Haochi of Googlified posts a blog entry and follows up with a description of a demo exploit, describing how an attacker could use malicious XSS code to extract your contact addresses. He diggs his own story and gets a mute response (typical, Digg, did I hear you say?)…

2. Alex Bailey of Techread duly noted it on his blog which can be read here, which was then dugg and made it screaming to the front page as:
GMail Hacked: Visit ANY Website, and Your Whole Contact List Can be Stolen

3. About the same time as Digg, Slashdot picked up the story, and then, the whole world knew.

So, what exactly happened?

Apparently, when you log in to any Google-affiliate site, your GMail addressbook finds its way into your browser through some nifty JavaScript function calling. And someone, somewhere, forgot the mandatory checks and balances. What it means is, you can see all your Gmail contacts lined up here.

Don’t worry, only you will be able to see them and nobody’s using the link for any malicious purposes. Until today morning, the contacts could also be viewed in your browser. Google engineers acted immediately (well, 24 hours after the bug was posted by Haochi) and fixed a part of the bug. You can no longer see your contact’s list in a browser. However, you can still get them in the XML format.

The other part can still be exploited and is worse as it directly provides the XML version of your addressbook. Hope, the GTeam fixes this one up in time, before the email harvesters have a field day.

The standard warnings go with this one:

• Do not click on links from untrusted sources.
  Hey, when did you ever know a person who was named “DWickjasl Pfennry”?

• Do not click on suspicious links even if they come from trusted sources
  Your bank would never send you a referral scheme via e-mail. Period. And no, you are not gonna win that iPod (unless its freepay, and they do not operate in India. So, there.)

• Report all spam. It helps.
  Use that small button named “Spam” (or “Report Spam” in case of GMail). It really works, you know.

• All Links are NOT meant for clicking
  Use the status bar. Keep your nouse over the link and look to the bottom left, you should be able to see the address of where the link points. If it looks suspicious, DON’T click. Period.

• Above all, use your common sense.
  If you don’t remember participating in the Fifth Third bank International lottery, YOU DIDN’T PARTICIPATE.

So, there you go… Capisce?

If you are getting some dirty thoughts in your head, well…

Don’t reel them in. You are pretty close. The knobs in the title refers exactly to the knobs you are thinking of. Or at least the ones I presume you are thinking of.

On the occasion of World Aids day (December 1st, for the blank stares) WebChutney, (an Indian full service consultancy that delivers innovative, interactive marketing solutions) came up with a really innovative idea to spread HIV/AIDS awareness.

Difficult in conception, simple in execution. Go ahead, click the image and “Cap the knobs“.
My best in a few times that I attempted was 21 seconds. Do let me know how you fared.

Ah, did I mention it was probably NSFW - Not Safe For Work? Unless you like to argue about it being educational and all that…

Spread the word, is what I’d say. Every little bit helps and heck, this is info-tainment, right? Or something like that…

Among other news:

1. I have added a small sidebar widget called “Read These Yet?” to each post. What this snappy li’l widget does is display related entries calculated according to a certain algorithm. Thanks a ton to the developers Alex@w-a-s-a-b-i and Jonas Israelsson
   
2. This website will see a lot more of template changes. But don’t worry, most of it will happen, while you guys aren’t looking. So rest easy on that one.
3. I will also add a shoutbox soon. Am currently evaluating the possibilities available out there on the web.
4. If there’s anything else you guys think is missing on the site. do let me know, via the comments or by mailing me. I’ll see if I can scrounge it up.

Keep visiting, fellas. And, spread the word, if you can…

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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