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KenRadio Mp3 via KickRSS
By admin | March 4, 2007
The purpose of this post is to share some insight into how RSS feeds can be mixed and mashed up to create new content. In this example I’ll be using RSS feeds from a popular tech news PodCast that has been sent through a JavaScript found on the KickRSS web site.
We start by going to the source web site, in this case, KenRadio.com. On the web site, there are two different RSS feeds. The first, and the one most people would probably click on, is available at the top of the main page (subscribe to this feed). That feed includes all the posts made to the KenRadio web site (which includes both MP3 and text content).
First, I am taking the RSS Podcast feed from KenRadio and will be running it through a JavaScript on KickRSS. In the screenshot below you’ll see that KenRadio offers several ways to listen to their audio broadcast (Windows media, RealPlayer, MP3). We are interested in the syndicated RSS feed.
I’m using the following settings in the JavaScript…
Show channel? Yes: Display information about the publisher of the feed.
Show item descriptions? 1=show full description
Target links in the new window? Yes
For RSS 2.0 feeds with Podcast enclosures, display link to media files: YES
(See the KickRSS JavaScript page to view all options for RSS feeds)
Here is the result of the JavaScript… (note: if you’re not seeing KenRadio content below something’s wrong)
We did not necessarily have to include information for the podcast enclosure since all links are going to launch an MP3 file (which would remove the “play MP3″ line).
Here’s what the feed would look like if we decided not to include the podcast enclosure (no play mp3 tab)… (note: if you’re not seeing KenRadio content below something’s wrong)
What’s cool about RSS is that you can mix multiple feeds into a mash up of “new” content and then put that content through the JavaScript generator. You can then place the resulting content on your web site or blog. In theory, Ken’s audio podcast’s could be available on web sites throughout the world.
To show the difference from the feed output above and the RSS feed on the main page of Kens web site, take a look at this…
That feed appears differently than the ones above which are strictly for MP3 podcasts.
In this last example we went to KickRSS and created a user called KenRadioMix. We then ran that user through the JavaScript RSS generator on KickRSS. We changed a few settings (limited the output to six items) and now we can display that mix here…
Unbeknownst to the source content creator at KenRadio.com (we’ll contact them) they have just increased their ability to syndicate their content across multiple channels. A user in the tech industry may want to display KenRadio content on their web site, the JavaScript generator makes this possible. KenRadio could even make a themed CSS coded snippet of JavaScript that users to their web site could copy and paste into their web sites, resulting in the MP3 broadcasts being available elsewhere. You can view an example of a styled feed here… Styled RSS Feed
In an upcoming post I will focus more on getting the feed styled and converting it into a simple section of JavaScript code that a visitor to your web site could copy and paste to another location.
Thanks to KenRadio for letting us use their RSS feeds as an example for this article.
Topics: RSS Topics |
March 5th, 2007 at 3:19 am
[...] on KickRSS.com (a mash making tool). I blogged about it and posted the JavaScript output on pickmeclickme.com (mashed potatoes on a [...]