Action for Libraries
The Internet Connection
By Michael Sauers
Cool RSS Tools
At the Computers in Libraries conference in March, I gave a post-conference workshop on integrating RSS into your Web site. This three-
hour workshop covered tool after tool you can use to manipulate your RSS feeds. Here are a few of the tools covered.
Sabifoo — www.sabifoo.com/main/
Sabifoo gives you the simplest way to create an RSS feed. Just give Sabifoo your instant messaging (IM) account name and then add it to
your buddy list. In return you'll be given the address of your RSS feed. To post an item to your feed, just send an IM to Sabifoo and it'll
do the rest. (Sabifoo does not support HTML, so if you include any in your messages, it will be displayed as you typed it, not as HTML
should be interpreted.)
immedi.at — immedi.at/
Immedi.at allows you to receive RSS feeds via IM, instead of posting to them as with Sabifoo. In my case I've set up immedi.at to watch
the RSS feed of comments posted to my Flickr account. Whenever a new comment is posted, I automatically receive an instant message
that contains the content of the posted comment.
ZapTXT — zaptxt.com/home/
ZapTXT takes the functionality of immedi.at and adds several wonderful features. The best is the ability to receive notification of posts
from feeds containing particular keywords. For example, I subscribe to a feed that announces new live recordings that are added to
dimeadozen.org/. I've set up my ZapTXT account to watch the feed and notify me whenever the words "miles" and "davis" appear in an
item. Additionally, ZapTXT can notify you not just via IM, but also via e-mail and SMS.
Feed2Podcast — www.feed2podcast.com/ Those of us who have portable digital music players and are constantly on the move love podcasts. The trouble is, the vast majority of RSS feeds that I read do not contain audio content, they're strictly text-based. Well, Feed2Podcast has come to my rescue. After signing up for a free account, just point Feed2Podcast to any RSS feed and receive a new URL for that feed. The resulting new feed will contain an audio version of the text content for your listening pleasure. (You can even do this to your own library's RSS feed as a simple way to start podcasting.) The computer-based speech isn't perfect and it takes a little bit of getting used to, but I can say it does work.
To view the rest of the tools I presented at CIL2006, go to del.icio.us/travelinlibrarian/cil2006/.