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All the News..........Syndication, Podcasting and Broadcatching |
This morning, over your cereal, toast and Red Bull you start up your iBook. Having replied to your emails, you check NetsNewsWire, your News Aggregator. There are 20 new articles, downloaded from a nominated set of newspapers, magazines and websites. Currently, you receive a summary of articles from the Sydney Morning Herald, New Scientist, GPSpeak, Emaildigest, Rugby Heaven, Macworld, Time Magazine and Medical News Today. You click on those summaries that spark your interest to view the full text.
Long ago, early this century, the World Wide Web was a battleground in which publishers hoped to capture the loyalty of a large number of web surfers to their particular site. Domains such as Slate spent not-so-small fortunes on establishing themselves as market leaders, and ‘content was king’. The business was modelled on the magazine industry - it was thought that profits would eventually flow through subscription and advertising revenue. In Feb 2000, the domain name business.com set a new world record auction price in selling for $US 8 million (that’s just for the name). The plan was for a more TV-like, passive web, where viewers would habitually visit their favourite web portal. Browsers were developed that included ‘channels’ to ‘push’ pages to users, complete with advertisements.
As it has turned out, the internet is used in ways that were not widely anticipated. People do not regularly visit a particular site for general information, but use Google to find specific information about specific topics. It has proved much harder for large sites to attract regular readership, and a prominent listing in Google is far more important than an expensive domain name.
However, if appropriately filtered and targeted, we can use ‘push’ techniques to keep informed about new developments in areas of particular interest to us. Judicious use of these tools can save a significant amount of time.
| Really Simple Syndication |
For some time, many websites have allowed visitors to ‘subscribe’ to an email newsletter. These are sent at regular intervals, providing headlines and a synopsis of new articles with a link to the full text. Our website, www.nrdgp.org.au provides such a newsletter, which includes the most recent articles and a summary of upcoming CPD events. The Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au) provides an excellent service, with twice daily news alerts linking to the full text article on the web site. You can also nominate to receive newsletters customised to your interest in business, travel, entertainment, sport or money. You need to register as a member of the FairfaxDigital network, which is free. By reading the SMH online, you may save a small forest each year. Newsletters are also available from the MJA, Australian Doctor, New Scientist and the National Prescribing Service. Emaildigest (emaildigest.com) is an assortment of articles from the fields of science, medicine and technology.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has been developed over the last few years by a web enthusiast named Dave Winer, which provides a better method of consolidating information. It provides a way for a website to let your computer know what is new. It sets a standard way of describing web content together with a link to the full version of the content. Thousands of websites now provide RSS ‘feeds’. A ‘news aggregator’ program on your computer allows you to combine the ‘feeds’ from all the web sites that you have decided are of interest to you. News aggregators are available free for Mac, Linux and Windows. Many web browsers (such as Firefox and Safari) incorporate RSS readers. (cf comment below)
In practice, this means that each day you have available a collection of articles from numerous chosen sources. This is easier than checking a number of emailed newsletters, and much quicker than visiting numerous websites to see if there is anything of interest.
More advanced news aggregators allow you to filter the articles by key word, and to view the full text within that application rather than opening a web browser window. When you download a News Aggregator, it will include hundreds of services on all topics to which you can subscribe. The Sydney Morning Herald, NRDGP, Emaildigest and New Scientist all provide an RSS service, and there are other news feeds devoted to topics as diverse as cooking, jokes, books, design and art. Most ‘Blogs’ (online diaries) also provide an RSS feed.
Before leaving for work, you plug your iPod into your desktop computer. This computer too has been busy overnight, downloading your favourite radio shows and saving them. Some of these shows have been broadcast on FM, some are made by enthusiastic amateurs and exist only online, and some include particular genres of music as well as talk. It only takes a couple of minutes to load your iPod, and then you have ‘Dr Karl’, ‘The Health Report’,’DIG’, ‘The Science Show’, ‘AM’ and the ‘Coodabeen Champions’ as files on your iPod ready for the drive to work.
‘Podcasting’ as a concept was developed in August 2004 by Adam Curry, in collobaration with Dave Winer, using the RSS standard. A Podcast is similar to an RSS feed as described above, but audio files are sent, rather than text articles. When you subscribe to a particular Podcast, any new audio files on that channel (music or talk) will be automatically downloaded to your computer and then to your iPod for listening to at your leisure. You can think of it as radio on demand.
The software required for this is available free of charge for any platform from Adam Curry’s site, ipodder.org. Newer versions of iTunes (Windows and Mac) also have the capability to manage podcats. There are already thousands of podcats available, on a disparate range of subjects. Your ABC is a leader in the field, and ‘DIG’ and ‘Dr Karl’ are already podcast from Triple J. Radio National is preparing to include some of its stable of programs.
ipodder.org has a comprehensive list of podcasts and Gigadial http://www.gigadial.net/ is a site that allows users to share and recommend particular podcast episodes. The iTunes music store now includes podcasts in its listings.
After dinner, the kids in bed, at 9.17pm, you are ready to watch some TV. Your TV is connected to your computer, and with your remote control you open a menu that lists the programs that have recently been automatically downloaded to your hard disk - all in high definition TV. You decide to watch the latest episode of ‘Desperate Housewives’. One click and you’re away. Pause at any time to answer the phone. Check the program guide for next week and indicate if there are any additional series or shows you would like to include in your automated download.
‘BitTorrent’ is a method that enables the sharing of very large files, by breaking them into small parts. (Users that have downloaded part of a large file share the parts they have already downloaded with other users. Very democratic.) Broadcatching is a technique that combines RSS feeds with BitTorrent to automatically download TV shows that you have indicated an interest in, so that they are available at any time you choose to watch them.
Broadcatching of mainstream shows, as described above, involves someone illegally saving a TV show when it is first broadcast and making it available to BitTorrent users, who will also be acting illegally - so don’t try this at home. There appears to be no shortage of people willing to do this - mainly one presumes, American college students. There are also many legitimate uses, and wikipedia believes broadcatching could ‘turn traditional distribution models on their heads’.
While you’re asleep, your computer monitors the RSS feeds, and collects the articles, audio files and TV shows you’ll need tomorrow. In the morning, over your cereal, toast and Red Bull you start up your iBook......
News Aggregators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_aggregator
On Mac, I like NetNewsWire. http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/
On Windows, try Feedreader http://www.feedreader.com/
Podcasting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting
ipodder http://www.ipodder.org
iTunes http://www.apple.com/itunes
Broadcatching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcatching
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