Hi all, I was wondering if anyone had any good links to Higher Education resource RSS news feeds? Cheers, George
Readers wanting to know what the hell George is talking about should click here. Or here's another interesting RSS article... actually a blog entry. Another excellent article may be found here; and here. Anyway... here ya' go, George: US Department of Education's Newsfeeds The Chronicle of Higher Education's Newsfeeds... ...and, here's something interesting: Apparently, former staffers of the Chronicle of Higher Education have created a competing online publication called Inside Higher Ed. While not having the formality of the Chronicle, it covers a lot of the same territory, including legal developments in Education. The site's still in BETA so much work on the site remains, but word has it that its content will be available via RSS and/or XML newsfeed. You should contact them for more info. The UK's Higher Education Academy Newsfeeds The Weblogs in Higher Education site has an RSS/XML icon on it if you scroll down the page a bit... on the left. Australia's EdNA Online has an RSS newsfeeds information page. And there is some interesting EdNA RSS Case Studies information, too. Here's some broader information; and here's a cogent example of the EdNA newsfeed on the Australian Government's Education Portal. The UnivAtty Blog (Legal and Privacy Issues in Higher Education) has a newsfeed icon (scroll down, on the right). Fortunada will provide RSS of its higher education content... or so says the Syndic8 web site. You may have to contact Fortunada to find out how. The EduResources weblog has a newsfeed icon on the right, if you scroll down a bit... and its feed is explained on the Syndic8 web site. The Kept-Up Academic Librarian has a newsfeed... at least according to the Syndic8 web site. Of course there's the old-standby MOREOVER.COM... just go to this page and use the browser's search function to look for the word "education" to see what it has to offer. But remember that if your use is commercial you'll have to pay... and Moreover's been getting more strict lately so, easy though it is to just rip-off the code... you will eventually be caught. The New York Times Education Headlines are always good... but not always limited to higher education. Go to this page and scroll all the way to the bottom to learn about RSS feeds. The BBC also provides education RSS newsfeed from its site... though, like the NY Times feed, it may not always be related to higher education. Click here to learn more... or here. The Washington Post offers education RSS newsfeed... though, like the NY Times and the BBC, it may not necessarily be higher education content. CNN offers and education RSS newsfeed channel... but, like the NY Times, the BBC, and the Washington Post, it may not necessarily be higher education content. The Distance Educator web site has a newsfeed icon about halfway down the page, on the left... though I can't imagine why anyone here would care about a site like that. [grin] Innovate - Journal of Online Education (a publication of Nova Southeastern University) offers an RSS newsfeed. University Business Daily's headlines can apparently be had via newsfeed... at least if the fact that Educator's Portal displays them is any indication. The University Work web site offers its job listings via RSS; and Resumes2work.com offers an "education" job listing category among its RSS feeds. The Board on Higher Education and Workforce Policy and Global Affairs of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC offers its content via RSS (see the XML icon at the very bottom of all its pages). The eSchool News Online web site offers its content via RSS; and Here's their own article on the subject. The Online Learning Update web site (blog) offers its content via RSS newsfeed. Just scroll about halfway down the page and look for the icon on the left. Univerity of Washington's online news site offers an "education" RSS channel... among others. The educationtoday.it web site offers its content via RSS newsfeed. ...and I could go on and on. This Google search might be helpful. And here is the Google/DMOZ "RSS" directory. By visiting some of the sites listed there, plus the sites listed under the "News Readers" page, and then searching on said sides for the phrase "higher education," you can often stumble onto what you're looking for. For example (and this is but one example, on the 2rss.com site, you can search for the phrase "higher education," and you'll get a listing that will, by hook or by crook, lead you to web sites with higher education content that offer RSS newsfeed channels. It's too bad Google both refuses to offer RSS content channels, and actively seeks out and squashes anyone who writes scripts that will convert Google output into RSS format, because then one could legally create their own RSS content from virtually any site. For example, let's say that you wanted to create an RSS feed of higher education content from the educationnews.org web site. To find all higher education content on that site using Google, all one would have to do is key the exact search phrase: +"higher education" site:educationnews.org into the Google search engine, which would result in these search results pages which contain links to pages only on the educationnews.org web site which contain the exact phrase "higher education." Once you've got that kind of output, a good Google-to-RSS script (which would be illegal at present) cold turn those Google search results pages into first-rate RSS feed; which could then be viewed in an RSS reader or on a web site with an RSS-to-HTML script. But, alas, until Google changes its position on things, that is only possible if one is willing to break the rules. Hope that helps!
In my own mind, if nowhere else, right? Whew! At least you didn't go for the other applicable comedy remark wherein you would retort to George's line, "Wot a load of leads," the painfully obvious one-liner, "Well... at least that's better than what DesElms's posts are usually a load of." George... when you finally get some kind of RSS feeds working on your site, let us know so we can take a look at 'em. Oh, yeah... one more hint: When you hunt-down RSS-to-HTML parser scripts, try to find one that is "intelligent" enough to remove duplicate headlines. When a story is big enough, many news outlets often cover it -- or, worse, all reprint the identical AP story -- resulting in headline after headline in an RSS feed that are duplicates and merely refer to the same ol' AP copy, but just in different publications. Sadly, the more "intelligent" RSS-to-HTML scripts are usually not free, so you'll probably have to pony-up from $29.95 to sometimes as much as ten times that amount to get one that really works right.
Thanks Greg. I've toyed with the idea, but I think my site is too small and I really should be concentrating on my PhD instead of playing with RSS feeds - but they are all part of my research, so I do justify it that way! I have downloaded a program called Pluck http://www.pluck.com which is quite excellent. It is web based and can hold all your RSS feeds, URLS and has an excellent online search facility. Highly recommended. Cheers, George
Pluck is nice, but it's an RSS reader, not a web site RSS-to-HTML script. Even it's web-based feature is just a web-based version of little more than an end-user, desktop, personal news reader... just in a browser window instead of a normal application window. What I was actually referring to was an RSS-to-HTML script (something written, for example, in Perl, PHP or .ASP) that would reside on a web server and would permit its user to display RSS feeds on said user's web site, in a little box somewhere. Active, constantly-changing content, and all that sorta' stuff... ya' know? But I now realize -- and as you've pointed out -- that you were not really looking for something for your site. That's cool. I'm still happy to have helped. I trust that an acknowledgement will appear in your dissertation's end notes. [Just kidding... er... you know... sort of!]
Gee... I really was just kidding, George. The whole "er... you know... sort of" thing was pure comedy... or a pathetic attempt thereat. Anyway... good luck -- ne, great luck -- on your research!
And I was being serious as well. You have helped me and you are already in my acknowledgements list. Cheers, George
