State Services Commission Feeds for Thought

1
Feeds for Thought
(revised 8 July 2008)
2
Three courses

• What is a feed?
• The NZ e-Gif RSS specification
• The old spec (2003)?
• Proposed update
• Future thinking...

3
What is a web feed?

• Wikipedia
• a format used for providing users
• with frequently updated data
• - link usually marked by icon

4
newzealand.govt.nz
5
Feeds 101 why use a feed?

• See http//www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english
• Old way New way
• - faster
• - more reliable notification of
  changes

6
What a feed reader does?

• mark as read much like your email reader
• notify new and updated content

7
So is a feed push or pull?

• A feed is push just like e-mail is push.
• it looks to the user like push and thats all
  that matters
• (underneath, it's pull)?

8
Feed poisoning

• Bad experiences weve all had
• IE 6 shows source xml
• Poor error handling
• Partial data

9
Internet Explorer 6 - displays source code
10
nzherald.co.nz - broken
11
e.govt.nz subset and different source
12
oag.govt.nz non standard elements

• Faithful implementation of the NZ spec (2003)?

13
New recommendations for NZ

• Atom 1.0 status is Recommended
• atom is an official specification managed by IETF
  (RFC 4287)?
• RSS status is Deprecated
• Notes for New Zealand
• Recommend NZ categories
• nznews, nzjob, nzconsult, nzevent
• Create NZ extension to add date-end
• for jobs and consultations
• nzdtend 2008-06-17T104500Z1200

14
Recommended element structure
15
Atom example
16
Atom feed in IE 7
17
Aggregation

• Combine and process feeds
• simplified viewing and tracking
• further processing
• not about newzealand.govt.nz
• aggregation services
• personal aggregators

18
Personal aggregation Yahoo Pipes
19
And feed exports

• e.g. rssfwd.com, feedburner.com
• To email
• To SMS
• To JSON (for applications)
• Its just data

20
A better definition

• Not the Wikipedia definition
• a format used for providing users
• with frequently updated data
• not about frequently updated
• not about providing to users
• it is about semantics
• a format for publishing information
  semantically

21
But why RE-publish data?

• Feeds are usually an alternate version of web
  content
• May be a subset of items
• Content may be different to the web page, even
  with a CMS backend
• Not authoritative
• Is there a better format for
• publishing information semantically?

22
Microformat existing content

• add semantic markers to HTML content
• Uses existing grammar of HTML classes and
  attributes
• 'plain' html
• ltspangtState Services Commissionlt/spangt
• enhanced as hCard microformat
• ltdiv class"vcard"gt
• ltspan class"org fn"gtState Services
  Commissionlt/spangt
• lt/divgt
• hAtom is 1-to-1 equivalent of Atom

23
Atom hAtom
24
hAtom

• A semantic web page can replace a feed
• Transform this sample...

25
hAtom
Sample based on IRD page
26
hatom2atom hAtom page is now a feed
27
'read' a web page in a feed reader
track a web page
28
IE 8 extends hAtom into the web slice

• Web slice c. hAtom
• hslice tag
• html 'id' is required
• ltdiv class"hslice" id"item123"gt
• ...
• lt/divgt

29
A web slice tracked in IE 8
30
Categories use a NZ tag space

• Tag base newzealand.govt.nz/tag/
• Will provide technorati functionality for NZ
  (govt)

31
Summary - NZ govt feeds in 2008

• Feeds should publish authoritative, complete data
• NZ govt feeds will migrate to Atom
• tags nznews, nzjob, nzconsult, nzevent
• extension nzdtend for jobs consultations
• newzealand.govt.nz will aggregate all feed
  formats
• hAtom / web slices will become mainstream
• hAtom can be an alternative to an Atom feed
• newzealand.govt.nz will aggregate hAtom
  hCalendar
• See examples at http//eg.elabs.govt.nz/feeds