RSS, I get it, Do you? November 3, 2004

November 3, 2004

AACS meetings are free and open to the public. Supporting membership is $20 per year.

AACS Meeting Time: 7:30 pm
Location: 330 E. Liberty (Ann Arbor IT Zone)

Topic: RSS, I get it, Do you?

Josh Holmes

Are you flooded behind a mound of emails and newsletters that you never get to read? What about the 150 web sites that youd like to monitor to check for new content? But thats just impractical during the work week. You might actually get to each of those sites once a month  but its doubtful.

The answer to these two problems is RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS itself is not that complicated, but its value is immense. To individuals, you can monitor many of your favorite technical web sites, from MSDN to MySql, news sites, from eWeek to the NY Times, and keep up with the thoughts of the millions of bloggers out there. To corporations, you can create feeds to allow people to monitor news within the company, project statuses, error reports and much more.

In this talk, we will define RSS, how it is used and its importance. Then we will create a simply RSS feed that will allow you to monitor new or changed files in a given directory on the machine. We will close by creating our own web based RSS reader.

Josh Holmes works with a diverse client set to improve their development skills and to aid deployment of server, web, desktop, handheld and Pocket PC mobility applications. Utilizing his unique combination of theoretical knowledge and hands on experience, Josh combines the abstract with real life and has developed software courses focusing on .NET, ASP.NET, XML SPY, XML, VB.NET, C#, Compact Framework and Advanced Compact Framework.

A frequent speaker at national and international software development conferences, Josh serves as an officer for several local technology non-profit organizations.