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Practical Uses for RSS

May 24, 2008

Have I ever mentioned that I love RSS feeds? I’ve been experimenting more and more with them, and I’m finding them incredibly convenient for both producing and consuming information. And I’m not talking about blog RSS feeds, although they are of course the most popular use; I’m talking about other ways you can use RSS in personal life and in business.

How do you use RSS? That’s not rhetorical. Really, I’d like to know how you use RSS. What tools are you using, especially script-based tools used for publishing, consuming, or mashing up feeds (not readers or aggregators)?

Here are some practical examples of RSS at work:

Lifestream: we’ve all heard of FriendFeed and Twitter — I’ve been experimenting with a similar lifestream service just for friends and family. I can’t tell you how much more I know about people by getting these RSS alerts about what they’re doing. And because it’s a personal service, I’m getting more real-life entries, and not the polish or image conscious alerts that I get on Twitter.

Web site content: almost any web-based content can be transformed into an RSS feed. The only real requirement is that the information changes regularly.

Upcoming events: RSS is a great way to let people know of events and activities that may be happening soon. It’s easy to turn an “events” page into an RSS feed.

New Products: Got an online store with new inventory added regularly? Add details about your newly added items to an RSS feed to let people know what’s just come in.

Weekly/Monthly Specials: Do you regularly make special offers on different products in your inventory? Again, RSS is a great way to tell people what’s on special this week or this month.

Newsletters: If you regularly produce an email newsletter, then consider converting it to RSS format as well as continuing to email it.

New Links: If you have a links directory, considering creating an RSS feed of the new links added to your directory in the last week or so. If you have a category structure within that directory, with links added often, you can create a feed for each category.

New Members: Do you run a public membership site? Recently joined members could be listed in an RSS feed with links direct to their profiles.

Ticker RSS Feeds: Do you have timely information to communicate to your customers? Automate the process with software and RSS can feed new critical information on an hourly basis (or more frequently if needed).

Vacation feed: I wrote a WordPress plug-in that allows you to import friends’ RSS feeds into your blog. Set a start and end date and time, a post frequency, and a minimum post length, then head out of town for your holiday!

Build an affilate site: sign up for an affiliate site like Commission Junction or Share a Sale, apply to several vendor programs, and then grab their affiliate feed to publish in your blog. Add your own product reviews and posts, and you’ve got a convenient money maker. Or import several relevant feeds with the vacation feed plug-in and you’ve got an auto-pilot income source.

What other things are you using RSS for? Please share!

Filed Under Blogs, Mash-ups, Web · Leave a Comment  

Protect Your Computer — It’s Easy

May 12, 2008

Okay, today’s post is a diversion from my normal subjects, but I just spent several hours helping a friend clean up his PC after it bogged down horribly. I was shocked at what I found. While most of this seems to be common knowledge, there are still far too many people whose computers are at risk. And that’s bad news for all of us! Because any weak link in the chain weakens the integrity of the internet as a whole and increases risk to other users near and far.

So here are a few simple steps that you must take to protect yourself, your computer, and the rest of the world.

1) Computer security is critical right from the moment you switch on your brand new computer, Ideally, buy a computer with pre-installed virus protection and a firewall. And buy a long-term subscription. Yes, you might be locked into a subscription that you won’t use, and maybe the software won’t be the top of the line out there, but it’s still less expensive and safer than renewing and upgrading every year. Especially considering just how problematic some anti-virus programs can be to upgrade. Don’t get me started.

2) If you don’t have anti-virus and anti-spyware installed from the start, install it yourself before connecting your computer to any public network. The difference between a computer virus and spyware is that a virus is a malicious piece of computer code that can be implanted on any computer and it can result in destruction of the file systems of your computer and can be transferred from one computer to another and spread like the biological virus. Spyware is a program that collects information about you without your knowledge or consent. Spyware does not spread like a virus, but is usually surreptitiously installed with other approved programs.

3) Keep your virus definitions up-to-date and keep your virus subscription active. Just turn it on — this is too easy not to do!

4) Always keep your software firewall on. Even better, get a router and plug your computer into that. Now you have a hardware firewall and a software firewall. A firewall is built into many security suites, and ships with the OS on most new computers. If you don’t have one, just grab yourself a free copy of Zone Alarm.

5) Keep your OS patched. For most of us, that just means turning on the automatic Windows Update feature.

6) Backup early, backup everything, backup often. Best way to backup? Partition your hard drive, and store all data on one drive, all applications on another drive. Setup a one-touch backup to an external drive. Store backups offsite with something Amazon’s S3 service.

7) Keep your passwords safe — i.e. don’t “sticky” them to your monitor; don’t use easy-to-guess passwords (did you see Patriot Games :-) ); don’t use dictionary words; mix it up with upper and lowercase, letters, numbers, special characters, 8-10 characters long.

8) Protect your personal information. If you are asked to give out personal information like phone number, address, SSN, identification numbers etc. on the internet, use more caution. Find out exactly why and how they will be used. If there is a link in your email that asks you to login by clicking on the link, then don’t! Usually genuine emails don’t ask you to login directly by clicking a link in the email. If you want to login to your membership accounts, always open a new browser and then type the URL of the website (to login to Paypal account, type paypal.com on the new browser instead of clicking on the link from an email that is asking you to login.).

If you are giving out credit card information, then the page that accepts credit card information must have secure encryption. The URL usually begins with https instead of the regular http. If you right click and select properties, the Connection section should read something like 128 bit encryption (High) and also must have 1024 bit exchange.

Just do it. Computer safety is simple and requires very little time, but it does require some habit changes. But you’ll make me and millions of other netizens very happy.

Filed Under Web · Leave a Comment  

$4500 Outrageous Blog Contest

May 1, 2008

Well, I’m not normally one to post something like this, as I usually find it akin to a chain letter. When I get those, I generally respond with: a) derision, b) “idiot”, or c) this web site. But I’m making an exception in this case because The Net Fool has put together a crazy delicious prize package for his contest. Check out the complete prize list below. They all look attractive, but I think I’m partial to the Entrecard package or the custom blog theme. Can you really go wrong with either of those?

To enter, subscribe to their e-mail feed, make a post like this one, or just leave some comments. Good luck!

Full contest details via the Net Fool

Cash

Web Hosting

WordPress Themes & Design

WordPress Scripts & Software

Blog Advertising

Blog Reviews

Subscriptions

  • 2 Year Subscription to GoStats Pro from GoStats
  • 5 One-Year VIP Memberships to CreateBanner.com from Xavier Media
  • Premium Subscription to DotSauce.com from DotSauce

Entrecard Credits

Miscellaneous

Filed Under Spigot · Leave a Comment