Serving the NGO communities with RSS
I went by the Thai Fund Foundation office (who host and run ThaiNGO.org) for some technical consultation.
I managed to find a fix/work around for a SQL SELECT issue I was having with Thai characters. With my Access XP (which is part of my Office XP Suite - American English version) the Visual Basic code window doesn't "transfer" the Thai character properly to my form (as the properties inspector shows). However Access XP, Thai version has no such problem. What the hey? Guess I'll have to hunt down that Multi-lingual pack.
Well, we also talked about CSS centered web designs. I also evangelized about RSS for several of their sites. I was swamped trying to sort CCJP's emails. WIth the deluge of spam and emails carrying the Novarg/MiMail virus aside, I still have lots of subscribed mailing lists, "urgent appeal" emails, event announcements to sort through. And who should be sorting through the emails and informing the right staff (currently we have one email address for the whole organization)?
I'm running a stop-gap solution even though Mozilla Thunderbird is a great mail program, and I'm afraid of deleting legit (and important) emails out of frustration. Subscribing to RSS feeds instead of emailed notices would help with communications and clearing up crazy email boxes.
Through several emails with Kjell at ICBL, I gather that RSS would be a really benefitial technology to serve the NGO community and others listening and involved.
Comments
I'm using this program called SpamSieve:
http://www.c-command.com/spamsieve/index.shtml
It uses a Bayesian spam filter which works wonderfully.. I get about 90+ spam messages a day, and I get perhaps one or two missed mails or "wrongly categorized" mail.
Of course, this program is Mac only. =) But I'm sure there's ones for PC...
Posted by: phil | February 3, 2004 11:49 AM
which version of the RSS specification are you using? i want to learn :)
Posted by: dr rumble | February 4, 2004 3:29 AM
I'm using both RSS 1.0 (index.rdf) and 2.0 (index.xml) feeds, and just recently I'm offering Atom 0.3 (atom.xml) feeds. From my front page you'll note that I have these several offerings. I also have a comments (comments.xml) feed and a summaries (summaries.xml) feed.
The format of the feed - well, you can probably figure it out from the feed - is basically something I grabbed from FeedValidator. You might be able to figure out the format of the feed from the Movable Type template tags.
My main feed is a full post feed, as opposed to a summary post - which is what MT defaults to. There's been discussion on pros and cons on the web... I don't have those URL's handy, sorry (my laptop is in the shop.)
Posted by: Dan | February 4, 2004 11:17 PM
coolz, thanks. definitely lots to learn.
Posted by: dr rumble | February 5, 2004 1:49 PM
excited to hear of philanthropic efforts in Asia.. I work with L2 Foundation, which is a private family foundation.. would love to hear more of similar things globally, particularly faith-based among Asians..
Posted by: djchuang | February 7, 2004 5:46 AM
how come i get a no entry id when i try to post?
Posted by: b.p. | February 7, 2004 4:11 PM
how come i get a no entry id when i try to post?
Posted by: b.p. | February 7, 2004 4:11 PM
what's the diff btwn your index.xml and your summaries.xml page? when i load it, it seems about the same in my feedreader...sorry for the double comment, the feedreader was acting up on me..
Posted by: b.p. | February 7, 2004 4:12 PM
You should only get summaries with summaries and... seriously. Unless Feedreader pulls in the whole post with my summaries. It shouldn't anyways. I wonder how it'll display when you're offline (pull your ethernet and try :) ) Maybe it'll work then.
Posted by: Dan | February 9, 2004 10:31 PM