Favorite RSS Resources and Tools
[Updated: 8/28/2008]
_______
(My emphasis here is on free and low-cost resources)
Explaining RSS
- Introduction to RSS for Librarians by Luke Rosenberger
- How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way by Stephanie Quilao
- Five Best Tips for Reducing RSS Information Overload by David Rothman
- Video: RSS in Plain English
Resources to help you choose a feed aggregator
- RSS Compendium-RSS Readers
- A Directory of RSS Aggregators
- Comprehensive List of Aggregator Options
- 20 Free Aggregators Reviewed and Compared
(My favorite is Google Reader)
RSS Plugins for Outlook
(2003 or earlier- Outlook 2007 has a feed aggregator built-in)
- RSS Popper
- BlogBot for Outlook
- Inclue!
- IntaVnews
- NewsGator Inbox (Now Free)
Google Reader Tips and Plug-ins
- Two more ways to trick out Google Reader
(Includes Greasemonkey Userscript for Google Reader Subscribe and Google Reader Notifier Firefox extension) - More toys for tricking out Google Reader
(Includes Gordita, Google Reader Optimized userscript, and Controlling Google Reader with a Bluetooth Phone) - Unofficial Google Reader Notifier (for OSX)
- Unofficial Google Reader Notifier (for Windows)
RSS-to-Email tools
- SendMeRSS (formerly R-mail)
- RSSFWD
- Squeet
- FeedBlitz
- FeedBurner
- ZapTXT (Also does neat things like RSS-to-IM)
- Feed My Inbox
- Turning Feeds into Emailed Alerts by David Rothman
Publishing RSS content on Web Pages
- Screencast: Using RSS to Add Currency to the Library Web Site (via streaming server – faster for those on slow connections | via blip.tv) – Melissa Rethlefsen, Education Technology Librarian, Learning Resource Center, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
Web page to supplement presentation. - Live examples of various tool outputs
Web-Based RSS-to-Web-Page tools
- BlinkBits
- Feedo Style
- Feedroll
- FeedSweep
- Rss2Java
- RapidFeeds
- RSS to JavaScript
- RSSxpress-Lite
- Feed2JS Build JavaScript and Preview
- FeedTwister
- Grazr
Hosted RSS-to-Web-Page Tools
Feed mashing and filtering tools
- BlogSieve (mashing and/or filtering)
- FEEDblendr (mashing)
- FEEDcombine (mashing)
- FeedRinse (mashing and/or filtering; step-by-step tutorial here)
- RSS Mix (mashing)
- FeedSifter (filtering)
- FeedTwister (mashing)
- FilterMyRSS (filtering)
- FeedSifter (filtering)
- ReFilter (filtering)
- Yahoo! Pipes (Massively versatile and powerful feed manipulator, much beloved by David)
- Microsoft Popfly (Microsoft’s answer to Yahoo! Pipes)
Creating feeds for pages that don’t offer them
Sometimes called “scraping”
- PonyFish: Perhaps the easiest and most intuitive to use
- Feed43: May be among the most powerful, but has a steeper learning curve. Detailed walkthrough available here.
- WotzWot
- Feedfire
- Feedwhip
- Feedity
- Page2RSS
- Dapper
- FeedYes
Creating feeds from PubMed
- PubMed RSS Tutorial (From the NLM)
- How to: Generate a Custom RSS feed from PubMed
- How To: Create an RSS Feed for a Feedless Journal with PubMed
- How to: Create a PubMed RSS Feed for 30 Journals
Creating feeds from LibWorm (/MedWorm)
Although structured slightly differently, MedWorm and LibWorm have similar interfaces and identical search operators.
LibWorm FAQ
LibWorm-Fu for Beginners
Intermediate/Advanced LibWorm-Fu (Power Searching)
Okay, your turn: What good stuff did I miss?
Like this post? Subscribe to the RSS feed!
January 14th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
David – an excellent overview, thank you!
I use RSS2java to convert live RSS to a webpage content on our blog http://www.rss2java.com/
Super easy to use and works fine for the last two years or so
January 14th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Thanks, Eugene- I’ve added it to the post!
January 14th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Lots of goodies to check out. Thank you, David. Have a look at http://www.rollsense.com for adding relevant RSS content to your blog. I found it very easy to set up.
January 14th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Thanks, Mark! I’m aware of RollSense, but haven’t played with it much- I’ll need to do that now.
If I were to use it, I’d want to create a separate OPML, not just output my subscriptions from Google Reader…
January 20th, 2008 at 9:40 am
[...] Setting Medical Information Free, Softwares and Tools Here is Hamza Emadeen M.’s say on “Medical and Healthcare related software at Software Repositories/Directories“. There is a need that force us , or inspire us to create, invent, design and develop Medical software. Here, he emphasizes addressing and understanding the needs of the heath care providers and the importance of these products being open source, updated, and supported. More light on the open source call is MedGadget’s “Collection of Active Open Source Projects for Health Care“. Open source software has been extremely successful in various technology sectors but has been slow to grow in the health care industry. However, OSS serves a vital role by breeding innovation at a break neck pace. A new blog has a decent summary of active OSS programs for the health care market. A blog called Web 2.0 and Semantic Web for Bioinformatics:Web technologies applied in data-intensive Life Science research, has a take this week involving “Tools for (data) mashups and remixes“. These are a few tools on my radar, to experiment with for trying to easily scrape data from webpages and see how it works mashing them up. David Rothman’s “Favorite RSS Resources and Tools“. This is a personal favorite as it took time to explain RSS and many many more wonderful inclusions on RSS. Let me usher you in beginning with some of the cocktails below. Explaining RSS Introduction to RSS for Librarians by Luke Rosenberger How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way by Stephanie Quilao Five Best Tips for Reducing RSS Information Overload by David Rothman Video: RSS in Plain English And, of course, it is never too early to say, “hats off!” to Dan In’s “New Journal Ranking Tool” on Bitesize Bio. Thompson Scientific is great for gaging the impact factors of various journals, but it has had a bit of a monopoly on journal rankings. As with any ranking scheme, there can be more than one valid way of comparing alternatives.Enter a new ranking tool – that’s free – the SCImago Journal Rank database. Information In Your Hands, Now What? There are kinds of information that we can opt to toss away almost instantly. And there are kinds that are vital to our study, research, and work. Some information are personal and/or special that we want to know how to obtain them and/or handle them. Patients first. Here is The International Council on Medical & Care Compunetics presents a 16-minute video on “Record Acces in practice“. A very good resource. Recently Dr. Amir Hannan from Haughton Thornley Medical in the UK has produced a video on how Record Access works. “This short video has been produced to help you, the patient, to get the best from the services that this practice is offering. Please watch the video carefully”. [...]
January 21st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
One of the best collections you’ve ever come up with, David! Great job!
January 30th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
how about grazr?
January 30th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Aw, man. I left Grazr out? That’s a really nice one, too. Thanks, Steve. I’ll add it now.