The RSS Editor Programme: RSS_broker

A. Annunziato, C. Best

JRC Ispra 1.10.2004

Why RSS ?• It is becoming a standard in NEWS exchange • It has a simple XML structure• It may be customizable• There are already many software tools based on RSS feeds• More than 6 million of results from a Google search on RSS feeds• This format is used both by EMM and SKM

Examples of RSS feeds and Feed Readers

    Politics

         Politics          Federal Page          2004 Election          George W. Bush          John Kerry          Senate          House          Bush Administration          Stephen Barr - Federal Page          Al Kamen - In the Loop          Dana Milbank - White House Notebook          Judy Sarasohn - Special Interests

All Headline News - continuously updated news and headline links from thousands of news sources. Also offers RSS feeds.

AmphetaDesk - cross platform, open-sourced, syndicated news aggregator.

Awasu - free Windows RSS news-reader. Bitworking - desktop application that downloads the

latest news and displays it in a web page.

Bloglines - free, web-based news aggregator that makes it easy to keep up with your favorite blogs and RSS newsfeeds.

Blogtrack.com - checks your favorite sites and tells you which ones have updated their content.

Fastbuzz - free web-based aggregator to search and view the latest additions to your favorite online publications.

Feedreader - Windows application that reads and displays RSS newsfeeds based on XML.

InfoSnorkel - customizable news aggregator and headline and RSS reader.

KlipFolio - information channel viewer that lets users view and manage Klip information channels on their desktops.

Meerkat - web-based syndicated content aggregator based on RSS.

From Washington Post web site

Search engines that respond with RSS

HTML

Feed readers

Why a RSS editor ?• SKM is automatically gathering and classifying the scientific news across

JRC web sites, using EMM scraping technique.

• Often, however, the information presented are:– Not completely relevant (not scientific or not important)– Not correctly classified– Not approved by the related Institutes

• Complains have been expressed by some Institutes that would like more control on the information presented in the news gathering page

• Therefore we decided to create a RSS authoring tool: RSS_edit . The Institutes can now create their own RSS file with databases or use the RSS_edit to keep updated an on-line feed on our servers.

Automatic News scraping and classification

Aggregator

Institutes RSS feeds

Aggregator

Functions of RSS_Edit

• Basic functions– Editing/creation/maintenance of any local or on-line RSS file (RSS feed)

• Use: web sites content management

– Filtering of RSS items

– Pre-structured access to all EMM/SKM (only for JRC users) and possibility to create a personalized folder/file structure (all users)

– On-line Creation of Word Report of the current RSS file

– Creation and maintenance of periodic Newsletters in Word

– Moderation of RSS feeds files

BASIC FUNCTIONS

Basic operations on RSS files

• Create new items (insert, append)• Delete items• Edit items content• Copy items from one file to another (also drag-and-drop

and cut-and-paste)• Save (local disk) and upload to web sites (HTTP or FTP)• Creation of favorites folders

BASIC FUNCTIONS

Web sites content management

• The new SKM home page– The content of the web site

is feeded by an XML file which can be modified with RSS_edit

BASIC FUNCTIONS

The new SKM home pageSKM_feeds_JRC_NB.xml Get on-line page

items 1 and 2 of the file

items 3 to 6 of the file

External news: items 1 to 3 of another file

BASIC FUNCTIONS

Word Report CreationCreation of the Word report for a given file or group of files

Possibility to add a personal logo to the report

BASIC FUNCTIONS

Newsletters

Frequency of the newsletter

Address where to send the newsletter

Edit or delete existing newsletter related to me, as user

Emails are sent at the specified intervals to the requester. The attachment contains a Word Report with the items newer than the previous report

BASIC FUNCTIONS

Moderators

Automatic web site content: no moderation

Input feed (ie. EMM)

Synchronizer & filtering

Output feed

With RSS Editor you can add/delete/edit (moderate) the news automatically gathered

Sample of comparison (HTML)

Edit moderated file

BASIC FUNCTIONS

Use of moderators to control the news quality

Added

BASIC FUNCTIONS

Use of moderators for Collaborative works (Networks)

Synchronizer & filtering

Functionalities of RSS_Edit

• Advanced functionalities– Automatic creation of feeds time plots

• Use: web sites monitoring (i.e. blogs activity)

– Creation of personalized EMM search RSS files or Google search

– Creation of annotated images with points/lines• possible use: GIS images annotation with on-line updates

– Images snapshots saving • possible use: press cuttings

ADVANCED FUNCTIONS

Time plots of RSS items• On line creation of time distribution (per minute, hour, day, month) of news• It can be used to monitor the activity of a web site (ie. blogs activity

monitoring). In principle it could be possible to develop alert systems based on blogs activity increase, related with special keywords (security applications).

ADVANCED FUNCTIONS

Image live annotations

• It is possible to connect a RSS file with an image and locate on the image specific points based on coordinate system contained in the file itself

• If the RSS file is kept updated it can give the live distribution of items

• Example:– Earthquakes in the world– EMM Breaking news (moderated, last 50)– Israel map with the security wall

ADVANCED FUNCTIONS

Image annotations

Lines

Edit/move vertices

Annotations with links

ADVANCED FUNCTIONS

Maps annotation and live displayCreate a new point in the RSS_edit

As you save the point it is available on-line

Activate both

Press Cuttings• It is possible to use RSS_Edit to digitally cutting a piece

of an image and connect it with one of the RSS items• This allows to create a digital Press Cutting web site

Press cuttings of 23/9 (HTML)

Corriere della Sera (XML)

Note:

This procedure still needs to be optimized… if there are interested clients to use it.

ADVANCED FUNCTIONS