eer kahein chalo chidi maar aaye
beer kahein chalo chidi maar aaye
phatte kahein chalo chidi maar aaye
hum kahein chaloa hamau chidi maar aaye
There are numerous tutorials on the web about RSS feed. Almost every website that provides a feed, has a tutorial. So I thought, why not write myself one. And also, I'm using RSS on my new website and thought, I should. The disclaimer here is that this tutorial is for infants, newbees, laymen, laywomen (feminists behold), and people like my dad and not for hard-core web developers.
Let's say you are of the kind who doesn't like to read the newspaper on the shit-pot simply because it becomes too bunglesome during that crucial moment. So what you want is only the headlines and probably a few starting lines.
RSS feed is exactly that. It consists of a list of titles, descriptions, and links. To cut the crap short, it's stuff-that-you-find-on-a-website formatted in simple title-description-link format. What the stuff essentially is depends on the website whose RSS feed you're taking. For example, you can get rss feed for rediff.com's latest news or rss feed for one liner jokes from office-humour.co.uk, or even rss feed for guitar chords from chordie.com.
How to read an RSS feed?
When you ask for an RSS feed from any website (say rediff.com), you get something like "http://www.rediff.com/rss/inrss.xml". Yes, that's it. No fanfare or dough-nuts. Now, it's up to you to parse this file and display it as per your wish. But if you're like my dad, you'd be horrified to know this. So search for RSS feed reader on Google and you'll get about 118,000,000 results in about 0.96 seconds.
What is an RSS reader?
It is a software (duh!). A small utility for your desktop (for those lucky ones who have always on internet connection). But there are certain websites (Google reader) where you can choose (or give your own) RSS feeds and they'll display them in a well structured manner. Something like a personalized page of Yahoo or MSN.
How do they make the RSS feed for their website?
Well, that's for them to understand and you not to care about. But if you're really interested, read on. They publicly give a link like "http://www.rediff.com/rss/inrss.xml". So whenever they'll update their website, they'll update this file as well. What if they don't? Well, it's automated. If it isn't, then you better google for another website. The feed, by rule, ensures that you'll always get the latest content.
Is it free? If yes, why are the providing it?
I knew you'd ask this question. Yes, it's free. And the answer to why is same as why they're having their website at all? Simply put, advertisement. If I'm providing an RSS feed, people start using my RSS feed. Other people read my site's feed into another site and click to get details and eventually come back to my site. So traffic increases on my site.
And obviously you want traffic on your site, otherwise why have the site public at all?
Why is the title of this post named RSS/Atom feed, when you're talking about RSS feeds only?
You never stop asking questions now, do you? This is because to know what is an Atom feed, you need to do the following:
Copy the post and paste it into a text editor. Using Find-Replace dialog, replace "RSS" by "Atom", and you'll get an Atom feed tutorial.
Only difference is that the format of an RSS feed and an Atom feed is different. So, a pure RSS reader cannot read Atom feed and vice-versa.
And why in the world do they have two formats for the same thing?
Atom guys say it's an improvement over RSS. RSS supporters claim that Atom is bull and adding confusion to public.
Just as I like to read paper on my shit-pot and you don't.
eer maare teen chidi
beer maare teen chidi
phatte maare teen chidi
hum giraaaa bareili
An incident happened in Armenia (a country in Southwestern Asia, east of Turkey; I admit, I did not know where or what is Armenia untill I googled it.). An Indian medical student fell down from sixth floor and had serious injuries. He died due to "medical negligence". The Indian student community is protesting for justice.
Negligence would not be the right word here. Probably, gross mutilation or intentional dispatching is more suited. A medical college is a hospital in itself, fully equipped where stone thrown in any direction would hit a doctor with stethoscope. (I'm assuming a doctor can cure any type of ijury. Being a computer engineer I cannot repair the car just because it has a computer for fuel flow control. But I hope doctors are a different story.)
My heart-felt condolences to everyone close to the deceased. And to help spreading the message through blogs, my humble little 2 cents are here.
It's been some time since I wrote anything for the blog. And when I was just thinking about it, I get this mail. I would surely categorize it as the most pathetic forwarded mail I ever got. Read for yourself.
Complan
Boy - "I am a PB boy"
Girl - "I am a PB gal"
"Badte bacho ke liye complete software - Powerbuilder"
Coca cola
"Eat bugs, Sleep bugs.....Do only debugs"
Visa Card
Internet Programmer - "I got the ASP power , now u go get it!!!"
"Microsoft office - Nothing official about it !!!"
Lifebuoy
"Software ki raksha karta hein Norton Anti virus Norton anti virus hai jaha,
Software hein vahan...NORTON!"
Maggi
Project Manager - I want the code today....
Programmer - 2 minutes
"Programmer ka kam kare asaan,
Duniya bhar me hai iski shaan...
VB....VB.....VB"
Raymonds
"The complete software ....since 1802" - COBOL
Boost
Project Manager - "Power objects is secret of my program"
Programmers - " Our programmes"
Husband - 'Thak gaya hoon mein"
Wife give's him instant cofee and says
" To create instant miracle....Use Oracle
It is an insult to blogs to put this above. So you better read and get irritated as soon as possible, 'cause I can't really hold on to this shit on my blog for long.
On Tuesday, I met few friends and came to know about two really cool things.
AJAX - I was looking for ideas to implement search on my website (and I don't want to pay for it). So I wanted to load a page in background and have a Javascript search into that page and display the search results. But, I didn't know how to get the page in background. Alternate option for what I wished to do was to have an invisible frame but it wasn't again working for me because I was already using frames and some other scripts which were conflicting with this method.
So from those friends, I came to know about this technology called AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), which does precisely the same thing. This is used by Google extensively. [Google: ajax, Wikipedia, AJAX: Getting Started]
Picsquare - Another thing I needed was online printing of Digital photos. Numerous on websites but all ask in dollars. So this is the first website that I know of and that is Bangalore based which allows [as of now] unlimited online storage for photos and also sends you by post the digital prints of photographs. Of course, they have things like greeting cards, mugs, calendars and stuff like that. Really cool!!!
Socializing I guess, has it's own benefits :-)
Upadhyay (undoubtedly nerdier-than-thou) has come up with this really cool funda to categorize your blogs. Plain javascript and DHTML. So simple, yet so convenient.
Post your suggestions in the comments.
Try it: www.labelr.com
Suggestions:
1. Include "Show All" label
I heard about a band called Shoestring on Radio City, Bangalore. Was browsing through their website when I found a link on "Learn to play [guitar]". Thought of checking it out.
It's really good. Includes music reading (which I always wanted to learn, but was too lazy). And guess what, the classes are in a pub :-) - Legends of Rock (review 1, review 2).
The curriculum looks pretty professional. And even after 4 years of playing guitar, I'll still be in the beginner. Why? Well, I don't know how to play :-). No seriously, I don't. I can only play some chords (not including the 5ths) and sing along.
And when I try my fingers, it plays pretty much like the Axe-Land ad (probably much worse). And when it comes to playing a Pink Floyd song, ... god help me.
But I might pass through to the intermediate level because the beginners level is only the basic chords (as per the curriculum). Let's see. The teacher, Robert - member of Shoestring - will be assessing. If they ask for theory, I'll go oops! If they ask for lead guitar, I'll go oops again!
Planning to continue this class till the advanced level and learn the studio basics as well. Need to learn everything to launch an album :-). Pranky, keep those words coming.
Starting this Saturday (1-Apr-2006).
John Keogh, a lawyer in Australia, patented a wheel saying that it is a "circular transportation facilitation device".
Google - "John Keogh" wheel patent
He he he, that was funny! But will I have to pay for my car?
