Then send them a letter! Amy has posted a couple of form letters you can send to site publishers: one for the general public, and for journalists. I know I’ll be printing these up and sending them to a few places.
Surfing The Web So You Don't Have To
Then send them a letter! Amy has posted a couple of form letters you can send to site publishers: one for the general public, and for journalists. I know I’ll be printing these up and sending them to a few places.
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Or you can use my web site that make RSS from site that doesn’t have RSS feed. Like CNN. You can’t e-mail CNN for RSS feed!! 🙂
http://express.xstreamsoft.com
Thanks, Jake, for mentioning the RSS request form letters I offer. Actually, you don’t have to print them out — I’ve just been making my requests to online publishers by e-mail.
Regarding the comment by FouZ about his service that will create an RSS feed for a site that doesn’t have one — yes, I’ve used a lot of “scraper” services like that (MyRSS, etc.) and they’re useful if you can’t get anything directly published by the site — but too often all I get from such scrapers is the headline of recent articles. And if the publisher’s headlines aren’t written in an intuitive style that stands alone well, the results of scraper feeds often just leave me scratching my head. Plus, scraper feeds tend to miss non-article forms of content — backgrounder pages, product announcements, press releases, event calendars, etc.
Therefore, ultimately the solution that would best serve online publishers and their audiences would be for the publishers to just go ahead and create their own feeds, to make sure the audience is getting everything they need (and everything the publisher wants them to get).
Feed scrapers are definitely valuable while RSS feeds are uncommon on Web sites, however. It’s a good “bridge” service while this media channel evolves.
– Amy Gahran