zam-click.com

Nowadays it’s easy to get bogged down with too much information from emails, blogs/websites and just about the day to day information we encounter away from our computers. Most of it useful, but if not careful, could make you unproductive depending on how you organize your time and schedules. I must admit, when I am online, I sometimes find myself going from website to website checking for those latest updates from my favourite sites without realizing how time-consuming that is. In most cases you don’t even realize it; you just go click-click-click even on stuff you don’t intend to read about. I know that’s how we learn by discovering new stuff, but how can you really assuage your click-click-click’s to save you time and make you even more productive?

I use a number of techniques to organize my ‘clicks’ and there are quite a few other effective ways you could use to catch up with just about anything online without wasting a lot of time. One of the most popular and effective techniques in use today is the use of RSS feeds. No doubt, since RSS feeds were introduced as early as 1995 some people have found them apprehensive and not bothered much about them, but trust me there is nothing difficult about the use of RSS feeds. It’s dead simple.

In fact, I have used this same technology to gather some of the top websites and blogs in Zambia giving me a ‘bird’s eye’ view of some of my favorite sites. That means, before I use up my energies to ‘click’ on a particular website (Zambian ones) I scan through a number of them, all at once and only read those that I find interesting. The rest I don’t bother, unless there is an intriguing subject.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that you should set up an entire website like zam-click.com just for RSS feeds, which you could do if you want. However, if you just want to use RSS feeds for the purposes of catching up on news and information the simplest and quickest way is to use feed-readers provided by your mail-providers. See what I mean here: Zam-click.com feel free to use it if it helps you in anyway.

What are RSS feeds?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or it’s sometimes referred to as Rich Site Summary. It’s an XML-based content format for distributing news, headlines, content, etc. Most popular news sites and blogs provide RSS feeds for you to subscribe to. All you need is a feed reader to view its contents. Feed readers come in all shapes and sizes these days. If you use Gmail for example, there is an in-built feature that you can use and the Firefox browser has one built right into their Bookmarks feature.

Really, there are endless ways you can use RSS feeds for and as far as I know its capabilities are not fully being utilized by many businesses especially in Zambia. What’s more shocking is that even the very news agencies that want their voices heard are not even bothered about this important feature that could be used to reach larger audiences.

In fact, most Zambian websites (especially Government’s) are static. What this means is that such websites have restricted interactivity making the use of RSS feeds almost impracticable.

Technically, the only obvious way such websites can be found is by those people that already have a clue about the existence of the websites; who physically type their web addresses or through web-links of related sites. Setting up RSS feeds for static websites is not a complicated process whether you’re the website owner or reader trying to catch up with stuff online. I have suggested a few sites you could use to subscribe your favourite feeds especially from static websites. In the meantime, here are some examples of good static websites without readily available RSS feeds. Trust me; I have left out more than I have listed here:

• The Post Zambia
• MUVI Studios
• The Daily-Mail, Times of Zambia, ZNBC (and just about every other Government website)
• Zamnet
• Zambia News and Information Services (ZANIS)
• Radio Phoenix
• ZAMONLINE (National Homepage of Zambia)
• Zambia Association of Musicians
• Central Statistics Office (Zambia)
• Michael Sata’s and Hakainde’s Websites (Pull up your socks RB seems to be set up on RSS feeds!)
  
  
  

  So How Can You Create an RSS Feed for a Static Website?

  
  If you visit Zam-click.com you will notice that some of the websites I said were static seems to have feeds displayed like the Post Newspaper, MUVI Studios and ZAMONLINE. This is because you can use third-party services as mentioned below to force the feeds out of static websites or you could write and execute a piece of XML code yourself, but who wants that? Not me!

  For my static websites I *use some of the following free services:

  • feedity.com (only allows up to 10 free feeds thereafter you pay)*
  • http://searchenginewatch.com/2175271/ (this blog gives good tips)
  • www.feedyes.com/ (supports mobile phones)
  • page2rss.com/ (adds button to your browser)*
  • rssfeedreader.com/ (add few lines of code for further customisation)
  • www.dapper.net/dapperfox/ (this is a Firefox extension that sits on your browser)
  • www.feedforall.com (paid service)
  • www.rapidfeeds.com/ (password protect your private or paid feeds!)
  • feed43.com (no registration required)*
  • www.ponyfish.com/ (give site credit to use services)

  
  
  What the feed readers actually do is automatically convert your feed into XML format so you don’t need to worry about additional formatting or coding. For example if you submit the URL: http:www.postzambia.com to the feed readers your URL is converted to something like:

  http:www.postzambia.com/yourfeed.xml.

  This now becomes your link to your RSS/XML feed, and the one you’ll be advertising so people can subscribe to. So any time you add a new article to your feed, that XML file is updated and your subscribers are able to catch up with your news updates and may be even spread the feed to others – that way your website gets more traffic and more readership. Besides good content, this could arguably be one of the reasons why in the news arena Lusakatimes seems to have good flowing traffic compared to other news websites in Zambia.

  If you know of other good feed-readers for static websites please share with us. Or if you need help setting up your site for RSS feeds send us your site here will be glad to help.

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