One of the most powerful features of a weblog is syndication. You'll notice that all of the PSESD weblogs has a link in the left hand side that says "Syndicate this site (XML)." If you click on it, you'll probably get a page full of code. That's okay, because that syndication link isn't meant for humans. The link is mean for aggregators. An aggregator is a little program that you can run on your computer. It has a list of these syndication feeds. The program then downloads the data (that you saw as code on your screen) from each link and displays an abstract. In short, it is a quick way to view abstracts from many sites at once. If you find an abstract that looks interesting, you can visit the site for the whole story.
There are a couple of nice aggregator programs you can use. NetNewsWire Lite is a very slick Mac OS X-only program. AmphetaDesk works on Windows and Mac OS 7/8/9. Both are free downloads.
You can find syndication feeds on many weblogs (they are sometimes called RSS or XML feeds, too). Both programs come with a number of feeds already set up from a variety of sites. Once you find a few feeds you like, you'll find it to be a very quick way to keep on top of news in a given field.
Posted by Karl
January 10, 2003 01:54 PM