Yahoo spoons out more RSS

By Elinor Mills, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: November 29, 2005, 11:00 PM PT

ZDNet Tags:

Yahoo was set to unveil on Wednesday a new Really Simple Syndication feed alert service and integration of RSS feeds into its new Yahoo Mail beta, making the company the first to offer RSS in a major Web-based e-mail system.

The new RSS feed alert service will allow people to receive alerts via e-mail, instant message or SMS message, just as they currently can receive alerts for news stories about a specified topic, stock moves and game scores.

"You can get an alert for any RSS feed out there on the Internet," said Scott Gatz, senior director of personalization products for Yahoo. "There are a million different feeds that people have subscribed to using Yahoo products," including Yahoo News, Yahoo Mobile and My Yahoo. People can subscribe to RSS feeds by typing in the feed's Web address at Yahoo's alerts service page or choose from a list on the My Yahoo Web site, Gatz said.

Within a week or so, RSS feed publishers will be able to put a button on their Web sites that will allow people to subscribe to the feeds there and receive them in their Yahoo services, he said.

Yahoo also is integrating the My Yahoo RSS feed subscriptions directly into the new Yahoo Mail beta test service so people can read them when they check their e-mail, archive them and easily forward them to people in their contact list.

Users will be able to click on an "All Feeds" icon on the side of the e-mail interface and see the full RSS posts from the My Yahoo page, a selection of the most popular feeds or feeds that have been manually chosen.

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RSS 2.0 Specification

What is RSS?

RSS Directory

	About this website
	Specifications
	Feeds
	Aggregators
	Validators
	Howtos/Articles
	Tools
	Utilities

RSS is a Web content syndication format.

Its name is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication.

RSS is a dialect of XML. All RSS files must conform to the XML 1.0 specification, as published on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website.

A summary of RSS version history.

At the top level, a RSS document is a element, with a mandatory attribute called version, that specifies the version of RSS that the document conforms to. If it conforms to this specification, the version attribute must be 2.0.

Subordinate to the element is a single element, which contains information about the channel (metadata) and its contents.

Sample files

Here are sample files for: RSS 0.91, 0.92 and 2.0.

Note that the sample files may point to documents and services that no longer exist. The 0.91 sample was created when the 0.91 docs were written. Maintaining a trail of samples seems like a good idea.

About this document

A picture of a bouquet of flowers, the symbol of RSS 2.0. This document represents the status of RSS as of the Fall of 2002, version 2.0.1.

It incorporates all changes and additions, starting with the basic spec for RSS 0.91 (June 2000) and includes new features introduced in RSS 0.92 (December 2000) and RSS 0.94 (August 2002).

Change notes are here.

First we document the required and optional sub-elements of ; and then document the sub-elements of . The final sections answer frequently asked questions, and provide a roadmap for future evolution, and guidelines for extending RSS.

Required channel elements

Here's a list of the required channel elements, each with a brief description, an example, and where available, a pointer to a more complete description.

Element	Description	Example
title	The name of the channel. It's how people refer to your service. If you have an HTML website that contains the same information as your RSS file, the title of your channel should be the same as the title of your website.	GoUpstate.com News Headlines
link	The URL to the HTML website corresponding to the channel.	http://www.goupstate.com/
description	Phrase or sentence describing the channel.	The latest news from GoUpstate.com, a Spartanburg Herald-Journal Web site.

Optional channel elements

Here's a list of optional channel elements.

Element	Description	Example
language	The language the channel is written in. This allows aggregators to group all Italian language sites, for example, on a single page. A list of allowable values for this element, as provided by Netscape, is here. You may also use values defined by the W3C.	en-us
copyright	Copyright notice for content in the channel.	Copyright 2002, Spartanburg Herald-Journal
managingEditor	Email address for person responsible for editorial content.	geo@herald.com (George Matesky)
webMaster	Email address for person responsible for technical issues relating to channel.	betty@herald.com (Betty Guernsey)
pubDate	The publication date for the content in the channel. For example, the New York Times publishes on a daily basis, the publication date flips once every 24 hours. That's when the pubDate of the channel changes. All date-times in RSS conform to the Date and Time Specification of RFC 822, with the exception that the year may be expressed with two characters or four characters (four preferred).	Sat, 07 Sep 2002 00:00:01 GMT
lastBuildDate	The last time the content of the channel changed.	Sat, 07 Sep 2002 09:42:31 GMT
category	Specify one or more categories that the channel belongs to. Follows the same rules as the -level category element. More info.	Newspapers
generator	A string indicating the program used to generate the channel.	MightyInHouse Content System v2.3
docs	A URL that points to the documentation for the format used in the RSS file. It's probably a pointer to this page. It's for people who might stumble across an RSS file on a Web server 25 years from now and wonder what it is.	http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
cloud	Allows processes to register with a cloud to be notified of updates to the channel, implementing a lightweight publish-subscribe protocol for RSS feeds. More info here.
ttl	ttl stands for time to live. It's a number of minutes that indicates how long a channel can be cached before refreshing from the source. More info here.	60
image	Specifies a GIF, JPEG or PNG image that can be displayed with the channel. More info here.
rating	The PICS rating for the channel.
textInput	Specifies a text input box that can be displayed with the channel. More info here.
skipHours	A hint for aggregators telling them which hours they can skip. More info here.
skipDays	A hint for aggregators telling them which days they can skip. More info here.

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of , which contains three required and three optional sub-elements.

is the URL of a GIF, JPEG or PNG image that represents the channel.

describes the image, it's used in the ALT attribute of the HTML tag when the channel is rendered in HTML.

and is the URL of the site, when the channel is rendered, the image is a link to the site. (Note, in practice the image and should have the same value as the channel's .

Optional elements include and , numbers, indicating the width and height of the image in pixels. contains text that is included in the TITLE attribute of the link formed around the image in the HTML rendering.

Maximum value for width is 144, default value is 88.

Maximum value for height is 400, default value is 31.

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of .

It specifies a web service that supports the rssCloud interface which can be implemented in HTTP-POST, XML-RPC or SOAP 1.1.

Its purpose is to allow processes to register with a cloud to be notified of updates to the channel, implementing a lightweight publish-subscribe protocol for RSS feeds.

In this example, to request notification on the channel it appears in, you would send an XML-RPC message to rpc.sys.com on port 80, with a path of /RPC2. The procedure to call is myCloud.rssPleaseNotify.

A full explanation of this element and the rssCloud interface is here.

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of .

ttl stands for time to live. It's a number of minutes that indicates how long a channel can be cached before refreshing from the source. This makes it possible for RSS sources to be managed by a file-sharing network such as Gnutella.

Example: 60

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

A channel may optionally contain a sub-element, which contains four required sub-elements.

-- The label of the Submit button in the text input area.

-- Explains the text input area.

-- The name of the text object in the text input area.

-- The URL of the CGI script that processes text input requests.

The purpose of the element is something of a mystery. You can use it to specify a search engine box. Or to allow a reader to provide feedback. Most aggregators ignore it.

Elements of Elements of ' in archive.">

A channel may contain any number of s. An item may represent a "story" -- much like a story in a newspaper or magazine; if so its description is a synopsis of the story, and the link points to the full story. An item may also be complete in itself, if so, the description contains the text (entity-encoded HTML is allowed; see examples), and the link and title may be omitted. All elements of an item are optional, however at least one of title or description must be present.

Element	Description	Example
title	The title of the item.	Venice Film Festival Tries to Quit Sinking
link	The URL of the item.	http://nytimes.com/2004/12/07FEST.html
description	The item synopsis.	Some of the most heated chatter at the Venice Film Festival this week was about the way that the arrival of the stars at the Palazzo del Cinema was being staged.
author	Email address of the author of the item. More.
category	Includes the item in one or more categories. More.
comments	URL of a page for comments relating to the item. More.
enclosure	Describes a media object that is attached to the item. More.
guid	A string that uniquely identifies the item. More.
pubDate	Indicates when the item was published. More.
source	The RSS channel that the item came from. More.

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of .

. It has one required attribute, url, which links to the XMLization of the source.Its value is the name of the RSS channel that the item came from, derived from its

Tomalak's Realm

The purpose of this element is to propagate credit for links, to publicize the sources of news items. It can be used in the Post command of an aggregator. It should be generated automatically when forwarding an item from an aggregator to a weblog authoring tool.

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of .

It has three required attributes. url says where the enclosure is located, length says how big it is in bytes, and type says what its type is, a standard MIME type.

The url must be an http url.

A use-case narrative for this element is here.

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of .

It has one optional attribute, domain, a string that identifies a categorization taxonomy.

The value of the element is a forward-slash-separated string that identifies a hierarchic location in the indicated taxonomy. Processors may establish conventions for the interpretation of categories. Two examples are provided below:

Grateful Dead

MSFT

You may include as many category elements as you need to, for different domains, and to have an item cross-referenced in different parts of the same domain.

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of .

Its value is a date, indicating when the item was published. If it's a date in the future, aggregators may choose to not display the item until that date.

Sun, 19 May 2002 15:21:36 GMT

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of .

guid stands for globally unique identifier. It's a string that uniquely identifies the item. When present, an aggregator may choose to use this string to determine if an item is new.

http://some.server.com/weblogItem3207

There are no rules for the syntax of a guid. Aggregators must view them as a string. It's up to the source of the feed to establish the uniqueness of the string.

If the guid element has an attribute named "isPermaLink" with a value of true, the reader may assume that it is a permalink to the item, that is, a url that can be opened in a Web browser, that points to the full item described by the element. An example:

http://inessential.com/2002/09/01.php#a2

isPermaLink is optional, its default value is true. If its value is false, the guid may not be assumed to be a url, or a url to anything in particular.

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of .

If present, it is the url of the comments page for the item.

http://ekzemplo.com/entry/4403/comments

More about comments here.

sub-element of sub-element of ' in archive.">

is an optional sub-element of .

It's the email address of the author of the item. For newspapers and magazines syndicating via RSS, the author is the person who wrote the article that the describes. For collaborative weblogs, the author of the item might be different from the managing editor or webmaster. For a weblog authored by a single individual it would make sense to omit the element.

lawyer@boyer.net (Lawyer Boyer)

Comments

RSS places restrictions on the first non-whitespace characters of the data in and elements. The data in these elements must begin with an IANA-registered URI scheme, such as http://, https://, news://, mailto: and ftp://. Prior to RSS 2.0, the specification only allowed http:// and ftp://, however, in practice other URI schemes were in use by content developers and supported by aggregators. Aggregators may have limits on the URI schemes they support. Content developers should not assume that all aggregators support all schemes.

In RSS 0.91, various elements are restricted to 500 or 100 characters. There can be no more than 15 in a 0.91 . There are no string-length or XML-level limits in RSS 0.92 and greater. Processors may impose their own limits, and generators may have preferences that say no more than a certain number of s can appear in a channel, or that strings are limited in length.

In RSS 2.0, a provision is made for linking a channel to its identifier in a cataloging system, using the channel-level category feature, described above. For example, to link a channel to its Syndic8 identifier, include a category element as a sub-element of , with domain "Syndic8", and value the identifier for your channel in the Syndic8 database. The appropriate category element for Scripting News would be 1765.

A frequently asked question about s is how do they compare to s. Aren't they the same thing? Yes, in some content systems, and no in others. In some systems, is a permalink to a weblog item. However, in other systems, each is a synopsis of a longer article, points to the article, and is the permalink to the weblog entry. In all cases, it's recommended that you provide the guid, and if possible make it a permalink. This enables aggregators to not repeat items, even if there have been editing changes.

If you have questions about the RSS 2.0 format, please post them on the RSS2-Support mail list, hosted by Sjoerd Visscher. This is not a debating list, but serves as a support resource for users, authors and developers who are creating and using content in RSS 2.0 format.

Extending RSS

RSS originated in 1999, and has strived to be a simple, easy to understand format, with relatively modest goals. After it became a popular format, developers wanted to extend it using modules defined in namespaces, as specified by the W3C.

RSS 2.0 adds that capability, following a simple rule. A RSS feed may contain elements not described on this page, only if those elements are defined in a namespace.

The elements defined in this document are not themselves members of a namespace, so that RSS 2.0 can remain compatible with previous versions in the following sense -- a version 0.91 or 0.92 file is also a valid 2.0 file. If the elements of RSS 2.0 were in a namespace, this constraint would break, a version 0.9x file would not be a valid 2.0 file.

Roadmap

RSS is by no means a perfect format, but it is very popular and widely supported. Having a settled spec is something RSS has needed for a long time. The purpose of this work is to help it become a unchanging thing, to foster growth in the market that is developing around it, and to clear the path for innovation in new syndication formats. Therefore, the RSS spec is, for all practical purposes, frozen at version 2.0.1. We anticipate possible 2.0.2 or 2.0.3 versions, etc. only for the purpose of clarifying the specification, not for adding new features to the format. Subsequent work should happen in modules, using namespaces, and in completely new syndication formats, with new names.

License and authorship

RSS 2.0 is offered by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School under the terms of the Attribution/Share Alike Creative Commons license. The author of this document is Dave Winer, founder of UserLand software, and fellow at Berkman Center.

Unless otherwise labeled by its originating author, the content found on this site is made available under the terms of an Attribution/Share Alike Creative Commons license, with the exception that no rights are granted -- since they are not ours to grant -- in any logo, graphic design, trademarks or trade names, including the Harvard name. Last update: Sunday, January 30, 2005 at 6:14:58 PM. Webmaster: Rogers Cadenhead.

RSS (file format)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

(Redirected from RSS (protocol))

Jump to: navigation, search

It has been suggested that RDF Site Summary be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

"RSS" redirects here. For other uses, see RSS (disambiguation).

For RSS syndication feeds from Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Syndication.

RSS is a family of XML file formats for Web syndication used by (among other things) news websites and weblogs. The abbreviation is used to refer to the following standards:

Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0.0)

The technology of RSS allows Internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided RSS feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly. To use this technology, site owners create or obtain specialized software (such as a content management system) which, in the machine-readable XML format, presents new articles in a list, giving a line or two of each article and a link to the full article or post. Unlike subscriptions to many printed newspapers and magazines, most RSS subscriptions are free.

The RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data. This information is delivered as an XML file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using an aggregator.

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[edit]

Usage

RSS is widely used by the weblog community to share the latest entries' headlines or their full text, and even attached multimedia files. (See podcasting, vodcasting, broadcatching, photocasting, picturecasting, screencasting, Vloging, and MP3 blogs.) In mid 2000, use of RSS spread to many major news organizations, including Reuters, CNN, and the BBC, until under various usage agreements, providers allow other websites to incorporate their "syndicated" headline or headline-and-short-summary feeds. RSS is now used for many purposes, including marketing, bug-reports, or any other activity involving periodic updates or publications.

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled webpages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is now common to find RSS feeds on major Web sites, as well as many smaller ones.

Client-side readers and aggregators are typically constructed as standalone programs or extensions to existing programs like web browsers. Such programs are available for various operating systems. See list of news aggregators.

Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access. Some aggregators syndicate (combine) RSS feeds into new feeds, e.g. take all football related items from several sports feeds and provide a new football feed. There are also search engines for content published via RSS feeds like Feedster, Blogdigger or Plazoo.

On Web pages, RSS feeds are typically linked with an orange rectangle optionally with the letters XML or RSS .

[edit]

History

Before RSS, several similar formats already existed for syndication, but none achieved widespread popularity or are still in common use today, as most were envisioned to work only with a single service. For example, in 1997 Microsoft created Channel Definition Format for the Active Channel feature of Internet Explorer 4.0, which became mildly popular. Dave Winer also designed his own XML syndication format for use on his Scripting News weblog, which was also introduced in 1997 [1].

RDF Site Summary, the first version of RSS, was created by Dan Libby of Netscape in March 1999 for use on the My Netscape portal. This version became known as RSS 0.9. In July 1999, responding to comments and suggestions, Libby produced a prototype tentatively named RSS 0.91 [2] (RSS standing for Rich Site Summary), that simplified the format and incorporated parts of Winer's scriptingNews format. This they considered an interim measure, with Libby suggesting an RSS 1.0-like format through the so-called Futures Document [3].

Soon afterwards, Netscape lost interest in RSS/XML, leaving the format without an owner, just as it was becoming widely used. A working group and mailing list, RSS-DEV, was set up by various users and XML world notables to continue its development. At the same time, Winer unilaterally posted a modified version of the RSS 0.91 specification to the Userland website, since it was already in use in their products. He claimed the RSS 0.91 specification was the property of his company, UserLand Software.[4] Since neither side had any official claim on the name or the format, arguments raged whenever either side claimed RSS as its own, creating what became known as the RSS fork.

The RSS-DEV group went on to produce RSS 1.0 in December 2000. Like RSS 0.9 (but not 0.91) this was based on the RDF specifications, but was more modular, with many of the terms coming from standard metadata vocabularies such as Dublin Core.

Nineteen days later, Winer released by himself RSS 0.92, a minor and supposedly compatible set of changes to RSS 0.91. In April 2002, he published a draft of RSS 0.93 which was almost identical to 0.92. A draft RSS 0.94 surfaced in August, reverting the changes made in 0.93, and adding a type attribute to the description element.

In September 2002, Winer released a final successor to RSS 0.92, known as RSS 2.0 and emphasizing "Really Simple Syndication" as the meaning of the three-letter abbreviation. The RSS 2.0 spec removed the type attribute added in RSS 0.94 and allowed people to add extension elements using XML namespaces. Several versions of RSS 2.0 were released, but the version number of the document model was not changed. In 2003, Winer and Userland Software assigned ownership of the RSS 2.0 specification to his then workplace, Harvard's Berkman Center for the Internet & Society.

Winer was criticized for unilaterally creating a new format and raising the version number. In response, RSS 1.0 coauthor Aaron Swartz published RSS 3.0, a non-XML textual format. The format was possibly intended as a parody and only a few implementations were ever made.

In January 2005, Sean B. Palmer and Christopher Schmidt produced a preliminary draft of RSS 1.1. [5] It was intended as a bugfix for 1.0, removing little-used features, simplifying the syntax and improving the specification based on the more recent RDF specifications. As of July 2005, RSS 1.1 had amounted to little more than an academic exercise.

In August 2005, Jonathan Avidan launched his own project [6] to create an "RSS 3", though apparently without backing from anyone in the RSS industry, and the project failed to take off. Sean B. Palmer and Morbus Iff, claiming to be acting on behalf of Aaron Swartz, sent a cease-and-desist notice for abuse of the RSS 3 name. [7]

In November 2005, Microsoft proposed its Simple Sharing Extensions [8] to RSS, informally named "Real Simple Synchronization" [9] by Colm Smyth.

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Incompatibilities

As noted above, there are several different versions of RSS, falling into two major branches. The RDF, or RSS 1.* branch includes the following versions:

RSS 0.90 was the original Netscape RSS version. This RSS was called RDF Site Summary, but was based on an early working draft of the RDF standard, and was not compatible with the final RDF Recommendation.
RSS 1.0 and 1.1 are an open format by the "RSS-DEV Working Group", again standing for RDF Site Summary. RSS 1.0 is an RDF format like RSS 0.90, but not fully compatible with it, since 1.0 is based on the final RDF 1.0 Recommendation.

The RSS 2.* branch (initially UserLand, now Harvard) includes the following versions:

RSS 0.91 is the simplified RSS version released by Netscape, and also the version number of the simplified version championed by Dave Winer from Userland Software. The Netscape version was now called Rich Site Summary, this was no longer an RDF format, but was relatively easy to use. It remains the most common RSS variant.
RSS 0.92 through 0.94 are expansions of the RSS 0.91 format, which are mostly compatible with each other and with Winer's version of RSS 0.91, but are not compatible with RSS 0.90. In all Userland RSS 0.9x specifications, RSS was no longer an acronym.
RSS 2.0.1 has the internal version number 2.0. RSS 2.0.1 was proclaimed to be "frozen", but still updated shortly after release without changing the version number. RSS now stood for Really Simple Syndication. The major change in this version is an explicit extension mechanism using XML Namespaces.

For the most part, later versions in each branch are backward-compatible with earlier versions (aside from non-conformant RDF syntax in 0.90), and both versions include properly documented extension mechanisms using XML Namespaces, either directly (in the 2.* branch) or through RDF (in the 1.* branch). Most syndication software supports both branches. Mark Pilgrim's article "The Myth of RSS Compatibility" discusses RSS version compatibility in more detail.

The extension mechanisms make it possible for each branch to track innovations in the other. For example, the RSS 2.* branch was the first to support enclosures, making it the current leading choice for podcasting, and as of mid-2005 is the format supported for that use by iTunes and other podcasting software; however, an enclosure extension is now available for the RSS 1.* branch, mod_enclosure [10]. Likewise, the RSS 2.* core specification does not support providing full-text in addition to a synopsis, but the RSS 1.* markup can be (and often is) used as an extension. There are also several common outside extension packages available, include a new proposal from Microsoft for use in Internet Explorer 7.

The most serious compatibility problem is with HTML markup. Userland's RSS reader—generally considered as the reference implementation—did not originally filter out HTML markup from feeds. As a result, publishers began placing HTML markup into the titles and descriptions of items in their RSS feeds. This behaviour has become widely expected of readers, to the point of becoming a de facto standard, though there is still some inconsistency in how software handles this markup, particularly in titles. The RSS 2.0 specification was later updated to include examples of entity-encoded HTML, however all prior plain text usages remain valid.

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Atom

In reaction to perceived deficiencies in both RSS branches (and because RSS 2.0 is frozen with the intention that future work be done under a different name), a third group started a new syndication specification, Atom, in June 2003, and their work was later adopted by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

The relative benefits of Atom and the two RSS branches are currently a subject of heated debate within the Web-syndication community. Supporters claim that Atom improves on both RSS branches by relying more heavily on standard XML features, by supporting autodiscovery, and by specifying a payload container that can handle many different kinds of content unambiguously. Opponents claim that Atom unnecessarily introduces a third branch of syndication specifications, further confusing the marketplace.

For a comparison of Atom 1.0 to RSS 2.0 from the point of view of an Atom supporter, see Tim Bray's article here: [11].

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Example

The following is an example of an RSS 2.0 file.

<rss version="2.0">

  <channel>

    <title>Birthday Bash Interviewstitle>

    <link>http://kccnfm100.com/link>

    <description>Natural Vibrations.description>

    <language>en-uslanguage>

    <pubDate>Tue, 10 Jun 2003 04:00:00 GMTpubDate>

    <lastBuildDate>Tue, 10 Jun 2003 09:41:01 GMTlastBuildDate>

    <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssdocs>

    <generator>Weblog Editor 2.0generator>

    <managingEditor>editor@example.commanagingEditor>

    <webMaster>webmaster@example.comwebMaster>

    <item>

      <title>Star Citytitle>

      <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-starcity.asplink>

      <description>How do Americans get ready to work with Russians aboard the

        International Space Station? They take a crash course in culture, language

        and protocol at Russia's Star City.description>

      <pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2003 09:39:21 GMTpubDate>

      <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/06/03.html#item573guid>

    item>

    <item>

      <description>Sky watchers in Europe, Asia, and parts of Alaska and Canada

        will experience a partial eclipse of the Sun on Saturday, May 31st.description>

      <pubDate>Fri, 30 May 2003 11:06:42 GMTpubDate>

      <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/05/30.html#item572guid>

    item>

    <item>

      <title>The Engine That Does Moretitle>

      <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-VASIMR.asplink>

      <description>Before man travels to Mars, NASA hopes to design new engines

        that will let us fly through the Solar System more quickly.  The proposed

        VASIMR engine would do that.description>

      <pubDate>Tue, 27 May 2003 08:37:32 GMTpubDate>

      <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/05/27.html#item571guid>

    item>

    <item>

      <title>Astronauts' Dirty Laundrytitle>

      <link>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/news/2003/news-laundry.asplink>

      <description>Compared to earlier spacecraft, the International Space

        Station has many luxuries, but laundry facilities are not one of them.

        Instead, astronauts have other options.description>

      <pubDate>Tue, 20 May 2003 08:56:02 GMTpubDate>

      <guid>http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/2003/05/20.html#item570guid>

    item>

  channel>

rss>

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External links

RSS 0.91 Spec, revision 3
RSS 1.0 Specifications Modules
RSS 2.0 Specifications Modules
RSS History (Joseph Reagle)
RSS History (Dave Winer)
RSS Political Faq (Dave Winer)
History of the RSS Fork (Mark Pilgrim)
The Myth of RSS Compatibility (Mark Pilgrim)
RSS Quick Summary (Sam Ruby)
RSS 2.0 And Atom 1.0 Compared (various/wiki)
Online RSS and Atom Feed validator (Sam Ruby, Mark Pilgrim, Joseph Walton, and Phil Ringnalda)
(proposed) Simple Sharing Extensions to RSS (Microsoft)
Content feeds with RSS 2.0
rss-extensions.org, a proposed list of RSS extensions by companies such as Microsoft, Apple and others
RSS Directory
Informational RSS Articles

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29"

Categories: ‪Articles to be merged | ‪Web syndication formats | ‪RSS | ‪XML-based standards

Web RSS (Syndication) History

A "syndication" standard has been dealt two blows: the "push" bubble and RSS fork. See The Evolution of RSS for more introduction of the different versions and History of the RSS Fork for a political history, and RSS Links for the evolution of some of the specific technical features.

Dec 96: While at Apple, Ramanathan Guha proposes a (pre-XML) Project Sauce/X MCF format, "which stands for Meta Content Framework, is an open format for representing information about content." Dave Winer, of UserLand, is a (skeptical) early adopter.
Feb 97: Business Week starts the "push hype" by declaring an age of "Webcasting" in a cover story, the bubble grows for the likes of Marimba, PointCast and DataChannel.
Mar 97: Microsoft submits the Channel Definition Format (CDF) to the W3C
Jun 97: Netscape submits the Meta Content Framework Using XML (MCF) to the W3C
Oct 97: W3C publishes the first public W3C RDF Working Draft, inspired by MCF and PICS.
Dec 97: Dave Winer of UserLand proposes format, which is very similar to CDF.
Mar 99: My.Netscape.Com is launched based on RSS 0.9 (RDF Site Summary) which uses RDF syntax and XML Namespaces. Interestingly, marketing folks at Netcenter caused this to be a stripped down version from the author's original, "semantically richer", RDF version. Dan Libby, the author, captured the original conception in a Futures Document which is very much like today's RSS 1.0.
Jun 99: Dave Winer introduces scriptingNews 2.0b1, and raises some concerns with RSS, such that it only has headlines and no content/text, and he repeats an interest in collaboration with Netscape.
Jul 99: Despite the fact that the "push" bubble bursts, syndication remains a compelling application even if based on "poll then pull."
Jul 99: Netscape loses interest in the format, but given requests from UserLand and others, Netscape publishes RSS 0.91, renamed as "Rich Site Summary", devoid of namespaces, based on a DTD, and contains elements from UserLand's .
Dec 00: The RSS-DEV group release RSS 1.0, continuing the RDF syntax of RSS 0.9 and closer to Dan Libby's original RDF conception, using XML namespaces, and focusing on modularity/extensibility.
Sep 00: Debate erupts when Winer proposes a name split and accuses the RSS 1.0 community of theft and interference; animosity simmers.
Dec 00: Userland releases RSS 0.92, compatible with 0.91 but with new, optional, features/elements.
Aug 02: Dave Winer proposes RSS 2.0 with XML namespaces, some in the RDF community ironically propose a RSS 3.0.
June 03: Given difficulties demonstrated of the history of RSS so far, a working group forms with the goal of creating a new Weblog and syndication format Atomom. (formerly Echo) with the goal of being "100% vendor neutral, implemented by everybody, freely extensible by anybody, and cleanly and thoroughly specified."
March 04: Dave Winer proposes a fusion of RSS2.0 and Atom via IETF standardization.

20040413: A history of RSS with respect to specific technical developments and proposal.s

20040407: On April 06 2004 Dave Winer posted his own history. (However, his version elides many non-ScriptingNews events; I referred the version you are reading now to many folks — including Winer — and corrected it based on feedback, so I'm relatively confident in its completeness.)

20040407: There's another history in French at Opikanoba.

These are selected links from a broader collection of links covering the development of the RSS specification from the release of RSS by Netscape in March 1999 through the release of the RSS 1.0 Proposal in August 2000. The full list of links are available for download in .zip and .tgz format.

Mi Casa Networks

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

RSS Updates 11-30-2005 Good info on RSS Study and use this now..

Yahoo spoons out more RSS

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