Disseminating News Within Your Organisation

1
Disseminating News Within Your Organisation

• Brian Kelly / Pete Cliff
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath, BA2 7AY

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk P.Cliff_at_ukoln.ac.uk
URL http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/
UKOLN is supported by
2
Session Aims

• This session
• Includes hands-on exercises and group discussions
• By the end of the session you should
• Be aware of the potential of automated new feeds
  within an institutional context
• Be aware of current standards for news feeds
• Have made use of RSS viewers and authoring tools
• Have a feeling for the different models for
  managing news
• Be in a position to make recommendations on local
  approaches to the provision of news feeds

3
Timetable

• 1600 Start of workshop
• Introduction
• Current Approaches To News Feeds And Their
  Limitations
• Approaches to Automated News Feeds
• Standards For News Feeds
• Creating Your Own News Feed
• Deployment Issues
• Conclusions
• 1730

4
Exercise 1
E

• In small groups briefly discuss the following
• 1.1 What is your background?
• 1.2 Review news services within your institution
• 1.3 Describe the limitations of existing news
  services within your institution

Try not to spend too long on this exercise(3
mins)
5
About External News Feeds

• Many Web sites (e.g. Guardian, Moreover) now
  provide news feeds
• Go to Web site
• Select topics, look-and-feel, etc.
• Javascript code created, which you embed within
  your own page
• When user views page, the Javascript code pulls
  the current news information
• Alternatively you may be given the format of the
  news feed, and you write your own CGI script to
  pull the news

6
The Guardian Feed

• An example of a Guardian news feed is
  illustrated.
• Note that you have to use your own Perl script to
  process the news information.
• All the Guardian provides is the URL of the news
  feed.

See lthttp//www.guardian.co.uk/distribution/gt
7
Moreover

• Moreover provides a wizard for choosing your news
  feed and its appearance

To use the news feed, simply include the
JavaScript code in your Web page lt!-- Start Of
Moreover.com News Javascript Code --gt ltSCRIPT
LANGUAGE"Javascript"gt lt!-- // load
global_article array with articles from category
if (article ! null)
See lthttp//w.moreover.com/webmaster/gt
8
Need For Standards

• Proprietary approach
• Every supplier has its own format for news feeds
• Many different applications needed to download
  and parse news feeds
• Standards approach
• Open standard format for news
• Single application can be used with news feeds
  from different suppliers
• Easier to provide news as well as use news feeds
  provided by others

9
RSS
H

• RSS
• Originally (v 0.9) stood for Rich Site Summary
• A popular lightweight XML standard for
  distributing news feeds and syndication
• Now an RDF application RDF Site Summary

ltitem rdfabout"http//www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-
Level-3-Events-20010410/"gt lttitlegtDOM Level 3
Events Working Draft Publishedlt/titlegt
ltdescriptiongt10 April 2001 The DOM Working
Group has published an updated Working Draft of
.lt/descriptiongt ltlinkgthttp//www.w3.org/TR/2001/
WD-DOM-Level-3-Events-20010410/lt/linkgt lt/itemgt
Now try exercises 1, 2 and 3 to gain experiences
in using and creating RSS
10
Parsing RSS

• W3Cs news information is available as an RSS file

11
Creating RSS

• RSSxpress is an example of a Web-based tool which
  can be used to createan RSS file
• This tool was developed by UKOLN

Other tools are available to create RSS, and
expect to see them in a CMS (Zope already does
this). See lthttp//www.blogspace.com/rss/gt
12
Converting XHTML

• Use the Syndicate Your Page service by
• Adding some simple ltspangt tags
• Use Syndicate Your Page to transform your
  (lightly-structured) page to RSS

The output can then be processed by an RSS parser
13
Approaches To Viewing

• UKOLN has two RSS parsers
• RSSxpress
• A CGI program
• Requires SysAdmin to install locally and
  configure
• Works with any browser
• RSSxpress-lite
• JavaScript solution which can be used by HTML
  authors
• Browser must support JavaScript
• Need style sheet to improve appearance of news
  feeds

See lthttp//rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/gt and
lthttp//rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/lite/gt
14
Other Parsers (1)

• RSS was originally developed to enable published
  to provide resources which could be can be
  processed by My.Netscape.com

NOTE My.Netscape made use of RSS 0.9, not RSS
1.0. Netscape appear to no longer be developing
RSS
15
Other Parsers (2)
http//www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/rss/

• The Redland RSS 1.0 Viewer is an open source Web
  service allowing you to take RSS 1.0 feeds and
  format them as HTML.
• It was developed by Dave Beckett, ILRT,
  University of Bristol.

16
Other Parsers (3)
See lthttp//www.vertexdev.com/HeadlineViewer/gt

• Headline Viewer is an MS Windows application that
  lets you see news headlines from a configurable
  list of Headline providers

Moreover provide a free tickertape
application See lthttp//w.moreover.com/dev/ticker
.htmlgt
17
Other Parsers (4)
lthttp//www.feedreader.com/gt

• A final example of a news reader is Feedreader.

18
Deployment Issues
D

• Before deployment of news services in your
  institution
• What management issues need to be addressed?
• What technical issues need to be addressed?
• In addition
• Who should be providing news feeds which would be
  of use to your institution?

19
Technical Issues

• Issues
• Security and performance
• Creation tools
• Management tools
• Information Flow Models

20
Management Issues

• Issues
• Justification
• Resource implications
• Quality of information (automated deletion, etc.)
• Duplication of information
• Inappropriate information

21
Who Should be Doing This?

• Which institutions should be providing news feed
  which would benefit institutions?
• Funding bodies (e.g. JISC, HEFCE, EU, etc.) so
  that news of new funding calls will be available
  within institutional Web sites automatically
• National services (e.g. JISC services, LTSNs,
  etc.) so that information about news services,
  events, etc. can be provided in an automated way

22
Further Developments

• Creating and viewing news feeds is relatively
  simple.
• Possible enhancements include
• Personalised interfaces to news feeds
• Searching news feeds
• Management models for news feeds
• Integration with Content Management Systems

23
Personalised Feeds

• SOSIGs My.SOSIG service allows users to choose
  their preferred news feeds, including
• Commercial news
• HE feeds (JISCMail)
• Note that the JISCMail feed makes use of an
  email?RSS conversion filter

http//www.sosig.ac.uk/grapevine/User
24
Searching News Feeds

• The RDN has a Behind the Headlines service
• Small number of todays news items are chosen and
  used as a search string to the RDN hubs

25
Searching News Feeds

• You can provide pages containing canned
  searches of news feeds
• For example
• Your Research Grants Unit could provide results
  of a search for funding from news feeds
  provided by JISC, HEFCE and the EU.

• The Careers Department could provide results of a
  search for funding

26
Models
RSS
Community(e.g. MIDAS)
RSS
Institution (e.g. Bath)
Zope CMS outputs to RSS XHTML

• Good For User
• The end user can choose her news feeds, including
  local news, news from JISC services and news from
  third parties
• Good For Service
• The service can chose its own information
• flow model. Its news is disseminated
  automatically.

XHTML converted to RSS
RSS
External(e.g. BBC)
Structured database converted to RSS
27
Conclusions

• What conclusions have we reached
• On the potential for use of news feeds by our
  institution
• On our institutional policies on providing news
  feeds for use by others
• On technical approaches we could be using
• On managerial issues which need to be addressed