RSS

[James Glasheen]

Hi all just scanned the BBC article below and wondered what you all thought about RSS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3503509.stm

I'm wondering if this software is something that could benefit both our intranet at work and possibly Bentley Primary School in some way:

http://www.rssreader.com/

Your feelings please...

[francis]

We're already looking into RSS feeds for the (mutter, swear) plasma screens. The main issue is getting a connection through the firewalls (and you know what that means...). I can't believe you brought work up on a weekend :) - I spent 6 hours there yesterday working on the backend admin for the STS stuff, staring at that screen. Oh well, I got about 300 lines of new code written and some other stuff tweaked. This is the one we're interested in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/feeds/new...page/rss091.xml (http://www.bbc.co.uk/syndication/feeds/news/ukfs_news/front_page/rss091.xml)

Simon found a great Flash RSS reader (link at work) - costs about $25, but works like a dream. Apparently XML in FlashMX2004 is amazing - it's almost drag and drop - Flash does all the work for you.

You want feeds? Here's some:

http://feeds.scripting.com/rankings
http://feedster.com/top100.php

So, how much news is too much news?

Not sure it's going to be suitable for Bentley - there's no control over the news that is fed, and parents might not their kids knowing certain things, eg these from today's latest BBC feed:

1: Eight passengers are killed and dozens injured in a suicide attack on an Israeli bus in Jerusalem
2: Three failed asylum seekers living in Glasgow go on hunger strike and sew up their mouths in protest

I wonder if there are any feeds available for that audience/age range? I suspect that RSS feeds are still in the realm of "ooh look at me" as opposed to having matured enough to reach wider audiences. It is still very much in the realm of the non-technophobe.

[francis]

I don't suppose anything will come of this, but I mailed the BBC website and suggested that they add a Newsround RSS feed to their services. They already have a large amount of news feeds (http://backend.userland.com/2003/06/24), but nothing aimed directly at kids that parents could have confidence that the content was of a suitable level.

For instance, would rather hear more and more about Bliar (sic?) or read about something much more interesting (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/animals/newsid_3378000/3378853.stm)?