News aggregator

In computing, a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing.

News aggregation websites

Examples of this sort of website are the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post.^[1] There are also websites like Google News, where aggregation is entirely automatic, using algorithms which carry out contextual analysis and group similar stories together.^[2]

News aggregation websites started with sites like the Drudge Report, NewsNow, Andrew Breitbart and the Huffington Post, where content was still entered by humans. Newer sites such as Google News on the other hand are based on algorithms filling the content from a range of either automatically selected or manually added sources.

Software-based aggregation

Functions

Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites for updates, creating a unique information space or "personal newspaper". Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to check for new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update. The content is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the subscriber, as opposed to "pushed" with email or IM. Unlike recipients of some "pushed" information, the aggregator user can easily unsubscribe from a feed.

Aggregator features are frequently built into portal sites, Web browsers, and email programs.

The aggregator provides a consolidated view of the content in a single browser display or desktop application. Aggregators with podcasting capabilities can automatically download media files, such as MP3 recordings. In some cases, these can be automatically loaded onto portable media players (like iPods) when they are connected to the end-user's computer.

Recently, so-called RSS-narrators have appeared, which not only aggregate text-only news feeds, but also convert them into audio recordings for offline listening.

The syndicated content an aggregator will retrieve and interpret is usually supplied in the form of RSS or other XML-formatted data, such as RDF/XML or Atom.

For example, if there are many sites you visit frequently, without RSS the only way you can find out if anything on the sites has been updated is to go to each site individually. This can take a long time. Aggregation technology helps you to integrate these websites in one browser or page that can show the new or updated information from all the sites you choose, regardless of whether the content is text, music, pictures, or video. Customers only need to find an RSS feed on the Internet and add that in their RSS reader. There are many successful on-line RSS Readers, such as My Yahoo! and Google Reader. There is also a variety of RSS software: Feed Demon, and RSS Reader for example. For network security, users can choose what items can be shown in their RSS readers, like title, author or others, so it can exclude spam.

Varieties

The variety of software applications and components that are available to collect, format, translate, and republish XML feeds is a testament to the flexibility of the format and has shown the usefulness of presentation-independent data.

Web-based

The most commonly known web-based aggregators are reader applications on the web. These are meant for personal use and are hosted on remote servers. Because the application is available via the Web, it can be accessed anywhere by a user with an Internet connection.

More advanced methods of aggregating feeds are provided via Ajax coding techniques and XML components known as Web widgets. Ranging from full-fledged applications to small fragments of code that can be integrated into larger programs, they allow users to aggregate OPML files, email services, documents, or feeds into a single interface. Many customizable homepage and portal implementations provide such functionality.

In addition to aggregator services mainly for individual use, there are web applications that can be used to aggregate several blogs into one. One such variety—called planet sites—are used by online communities to aggregate community blogs in a centralized location. They are named after the Planet aggregator, a server application designed for this purpose.

Client software

Client software aggregators are installed applications designed to collect Web feed subscriptions and group them together using a user-friendly interface. The graphical user interface of such applications often closely resembles that of popular e-mail clients, using a three-panel composition in which subscriptions are grouped in a frame on the left, and individual entries are browsed, selected, and read in frames on the right.

Software aggregators can also take the form of news tickers which scroll feeds like ticker tape, alerters that display updates in windows as they are refreshed, web browser macro tools or as smaller components (sometimes called plugins or extensions), which can integrate feeds into the operating system or software applications such as a Web browser.

Client libraries

Media aggregators

Media aggregators are sometimes referred to as "Podcatchers" due to the popularity of the term "podcast" used to refer to a web feed containing audio or video. Media aggregators refer to applications, client software or Web based, which maintain subscriptions to feeds that contain audio or video media enclosures. They can be used to automatically download media, playback the media within the application interface, or synchronize media content with a portable media player.

Broadcatching

Several BitTorrent client software applications have added the ability to "broadcatch" torrents of distributed multimedia through the aggregation of web feeds.

Feed filtering

One of the problems with news aggregators is that the volume of articles can sometimes be overwhelming, especially when the user has many Web feed subscriptions. As a solution, many feed readers allow users to tag each feed with one or more keywords which can be used to sort and filter the available articles into easily navigable categories. Another option is to import the user's Attention Profile to filter items based on their relevance to the user's interests.

See also

• Comparison of feed aggregators
• Web feed
• Metasearch engine
• Lifestreaming

References

1. ^ Luscombe, Belinda (2009-03-19). "Arianna Huffington: The Web's New Oracle - TIME". www.time.com. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1886214,00.html. Retrieved 2009-03-30. "The Huffington Post was to have three basic functions: blog, news aggregator with an attitude and place for premoderated comments." 
2. ^ "Google News and newspaper publishers: allies or enemies? - Editors Weblog". www.editorsweblog.org. http://www.editorsweblog.org/analysis/2009/03/google_news_and_newspaper_publishers_all.php. Retrieved 2009-03-31. "some aggregators such as the Drudge Report that have a human editor choosing the headlines." 

External links

• Feed Readers at the Open Directory Project