Shamelessly ripped from TimYang
Basically, you can perform any task with RSS that requires search or information retrieval from a server. Automatically and repeatedly. Here are my favourites (please let me know if there are better services and I’ll update). I use this list to convince people to start using an RSS feed reader. There’s more to RSS than just weblog syndication and news aggregation.
- Get the news as it happens from multiple news sources
An RSS feed reader is an aggregator of numerous feeds from news sources (and nearly every major paper and TV news network has RSS feeds today). But now there are even feeds that aggregate other feeds. The new RSSmix.com lets you combine all the news source RSS feeds into one single feed so you get news as it happens.
- Collect your email from all your email accounts in your RSS reader
Easily done with mailbucket.org. And each Gmail account has an RSS feed too. Or if you’re a user of Mailinator.com, then you’ll be glad there’s a similar service called dodgeit.com but with RSS feeds.
- Track Fedex packages
Ben Hammersley says Just add your tracking number to the end of a special RSS feed address.
- Get notified of bargains at Ebay
RSSauction.com lets you specify the type of product, its description and even the price range in their customised Ebay feeds.
- Get stock updates
There have been various paid services and limited unpaid ticker services around. Tim Bray made a customisable feed. Yahoo is introducing its own RSS ticker service.
- Get the weather reports
Weather Underground has the weather of every city and town in the world. And each of them now has an RSS feed. Alternatively, there is RSSweather.com.
- Find out what people are saying about you, your company or your product online
Services like technorati.com and pubsub.com offer something that’s popularly called persistent search delivery. You type in a search term such as your name and or your company name or product name and they will return the newest indexed references to you in a customised RSS feed. Both services scan blogs. If you want persistent search delivery from a broader range of sites, you have Googlealert.com.
- Get music, radio programs and TV clips
Now you have podcasts and directories like podcastalley.com that also serve the latest podcasts in several RSS feeds. And increasingly, like Comedy Central’s Daily Show, broadcasters are finding it effective to promote and deliver their shows in RSS. Videobloggers now have a community website called Mcfeedia.com that adds tags to video blog RSS feeds.
- Stay updated on someone’s schedule
RSScalendar.com lets someone input new events and meetings on their schedule for free. And if you pick up the RSS feed for that schedule, you’re always up-to-date on what’s going on in that person’s day.
- Get cinema schedule updates
Quietly getting popular, a movement led by small local cinemas like City Cinema, rather than big cinema networks. But the bigger cinemas are delivering updates via email and these can be converted into feeds by mailbucket.org.
- Read your favourite comics
Many daily and weekly comic authors publish online and have an RSS feed. Dilbert of course has one. Best way to locate the feed is to type in the name of the comic into either Feedster.com or Bloglines.com (both are great RSS feed directories). And even if your favourite comic doesn’t have a feed on its website, a good comic will have someone somewhere creating an unofficial scraped feed. Comicalert.com has a large updated list of both official and unofficial RSS feed list of hundreds of comics.
- Find out what other people surfing
I don’t mean spyware. A lot of people use online bookmarks which they make public. Places like del.icio.us, feedmarker.com, furl.net and the new wists.com are online bookmark services that create RSS feeds for each user.
- Automatically backup your weblog posts
If your RSS feed is being picked up by an online feed reader service like Bloglines.com, they will store all your entries on their server. Unfortunately, they don’t have an export feature. But at least all your entries (if you have full entries in your RSS feed) are safe and dated.
- Get software updates
Popular software downloads sites like Download.com and versiontracker.com let you keep up with all new releases via RSS. So you can also be alerted when your favourite softwares have a new version or when there are better releases.
- Get the latest bittorrent files and ahem, p*rn
As they say, if its worth something, it’s worth more illegal. Bittorrent directory Torrentspy.com was the first to have an RSS feed that lets its users know what has just been uploaded. And the online p*rn industry, being always on the cutting edge of online business, was probably the first to take to blog CMSes and use them to generate traffic through RSS feeds. I’ll refrain from linking to one here, but it just takes a Google search to find several.
Your Linguistic Profile: |
| 45% General American English |
| 35% Yankee |
| 15% Dixie |
| 5% Upper Midwestern |
| 0% Midwestern |
I’m into podcasts nowadays. It’s much like an RSS feed but instead of delivering texts to your aggregator software, audio files will be delivered to you. These are 20-25mb mp3 files delivered to you.
I’m currently subscribed to Leo Laporte’s podcast. Leo is a pioneer of the now defunct show The ScreenSavers Show and Call for Help. Both shows were aired at Studio23 a few years back. They already have 4 mp3s up for grabs from the same site. Obviously, the ’show’ is all about tech stuffs. One thing I like in this method is that I can multitask of hearing the latest news and working at the same time. I still have my feeds subscribed but sometimes I find it hard to read all of ‘em.
Another thing I found out is that you don’t really need a third party software to download the podcasts. Just figure out the direct link of the mp3 file and then you’re good to go. Like so: Fourth Episode of This Week in Tech, this is a 25mb download therefore dialup users are forewarned. The downside of this method is that you have to constantly check the main site if a new podcast is being offered. Leo’s podcast is delivered every monday (Tuesday in the Philippines) so I’m pretty much confident that I will not be left behind.
There are tons of sites which offers podcasts. Here is a per category listing and here is the top 50 podcasts. Try to download one and see if you’ll like it. Some mp3’s are only 5mb which basically plays for about 10-15minutes. Mostly are 32-64kbps as opposed to music files ranging from 128-192kbps.
I’m currently on the hunt for good humor podcasts. I have downloaded few standup antics but they are not that funny. I’ll tell you if ever I find one.
Sorry I wasn’t able to blog this the moment the internet lorded it over last week.
We all know Fermat’s Last Theorem (well at least my college buddies). The proof was never found though.
Andrew Wiles proved it last 1993.
And now, a Math prof from UP (not from Diliman I assure you, I will dig up where he is stationed) refuted Wiles’ claim. And even more, he blasted the basic concepts of Number Theory (Math 117 during college days).
quote:
that the real number system in basic algebra, the foundation of mathematics, is defective. Specifically, two of its axioms (the trichotomy and completeness axioms, for those who took basic algebra in high school and college) are false.
Read more here. ManilaTimes even posted the correspondence of these two great mathematicians of our times. Feels good to somehow understand something the netizens are speaking these days.
EDIT:
I find it weird that he doesn’t say what UP campus is he from. Here’s his site.
Here’s my crossword trivia.
Enjoy. 
- Pen is officially an ex employee of CitiBank from this time forward. You can catch up for news about her from her blog.
- NBA first round playoffs has started. I’m rooting for Nash’s Phoenix Suns and Kidd & Carter’s New Jersey Nets. Though I doubt that the Nets can pull a 4 game win streak against Shaq’s Heat now that they are 0-3.
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S.P.I.T. will be performing at mag:net bar in Katipunan all Thursdays of May. I’m looking forward to watching them once again.
I’ve already watched them perform twice, one at UP and the other at Cafe Lupe. They are a fun group and highly recommended to watch.
- Bought a Lego Star Wars PS2 game. It’s a kid’s game so Pen and I liked it very much. Hehe. It’s a co-operative game and you get to play along side each other. I play Qui-Gon while Pen plays Obi-Wan. Nico, the officemate-guitarist, suggested this game and we liked it so much. Lego + StarWars is the bam!
- Speaking of Star Wars, the last episode will be shown on the 19th of May. Another movie worth anticipating. I hope Lucas will not disappoint the Star Wars geeks. No, I’m not a Star Wars geek but I do find the saga interesting.
- The 12-issue Superman I’ve been faithfully following has finally ended. It was a year long run with Jim Lee rendering the art. The whole arc was a big disappointment compared to his Batman Hush arc. Reviewers and critics consider this Superman storyline an intelligent narrative and they are missing the action Superman and Jim Lee are known for. Oh well, at least I was able to complete my collection. The only comic I’m following now is the Superman/Batman issues with Jeph Loeb writing the issues and various artists rendering the art.
- The project I’m doing with Dinky and Joel is halfway thru - that’s according to them. As their programmer, the job now shifts to me. After thoroughly finishing their part (modelling, understanding, interpreting), I must do my share and do the nitty gritty part of programming. This is not really a hard programming project. This will just run in Excel with lots of macros and VBA parts. If we are halfway thru as they’ve claimed, we have over-estimated our budget time. In our time-table, we are just entering our 25% schedule. I guess that’s a good thing so that the time-pressure is off our shoulders.
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And lastly, it’s the first of May. Happy Birthday to my mother dear.
