Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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One of my favorite book titles is Life is a Series of Presentations, by Tony Jeary. The obvious premise is that one is constantly interacting in a way where putting one's best foot forward, or face on, is imperative, particularly in business.

But smart presenters aren't interested in just broadcasting their ideas — they want to continue the process, preferably as a dialog. That is the reason for the growing popularity of blogs and RSS.

(The acronym RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. An RSS feed, also known as a news feed, is a syndicated news feed in an XML format that you can subscribe to.)

We've covered some of this territory before. In our update on podcasting from PowerPoint, we used the BlogMatrix tool to host our podcast within a presentation blog. We also used the tool to convert our PowerPoint WAV files into MP3 format for our podcasts. (The service hosts podcasts for less than $5/mo).

We also covered Serious Magic's video blogging tool VLOG-IT, which supports drag an drop with an online blog editor.

And last month we previewed an Outlook 2007 feature by highlighting a current tool that lets Outlook's Inbox aggregate RSS feeds.

The problem is that generating the XML code that allows an aggregator to subscribe to a feed, posting the feed with a useful graphic that the aggregator recognizes, and getting the word out about a subscription is daunting for a nonprogrammer

Here's an example of just the podcast code generated by Blogmatrix to host a podcast.

Figure 1079

How do you build a channel with the proper coding in order to allow an aggregator to subscribe to the feed? Basically this becomes a coded web page to which you would link using the little orange RSS or XML icons on a web page. Then an aggregator would add the URL for that page to its feeds. But I was wondering what kind of tools might be out there to facilitate creating such a channel and properly coded broadcast or web page.

Figure 1080

To get started I thought I would try Broadcast Builder Professional from Lionhardt Technologies.

One thing to keep in mind while installing the program is that if you already work with these formats with other programs, it will change your file associations if you aren't careful during setup.

The great analogy is iTunes — which can also handle podcasts but is used mainly for downloading and managing music. If you unsuspectingly load iTunes and click on the defaults, your file associations for playing MP3 audio will be changed. Similarly if you're just checking out Lionhardt BB, don't let it change your defaults for RSS files.

Figure 1081

Installation also includes a wizard that explains RSS and blogging and introduces the program.

Figure 1082

When you click Create a new feed, the program begins a wizard that allows you to enter the appropriate channel information.

Figure 1083

The first feed article can be entered into the appropriate sections of the wizard.

Figure 1084

Then, like any program, you need to pay attention to where the final files will be located on your home machine — here there under Lionhardt Program Files.

Figure 1085

The result is a summary of your channel information.

Figure 1086

Now it's time to generate HTML from the information in Broadcast Builder. Click Export Data > to HTML and then click Generate Files. When it's done (instantly) the program tells you where to find the completed files.

Figure 1087

These pages can be uploaded to your website and will comprise your RSS feed.

Figure 1088

You might also want to play with the final web page and experiment with other tools to add image links to your web pages, so that clicking on them brings up the URL that users can plug into their aggregators.

Of course, you may want to eventually write your own RSS code or delve into the mechanics more deeply. A search on InformIT will yield a wealth of resources. RSS 101 by Bob Reselman would be highly recommended as a starting off point. Part 4 of Bob's article describes some ways of "Making RSS Work for Your Organization."

Probably the key to this scenario is deciding what it is that you want to make available for subscription through an aggregator. If it's just a text blog with text entries, then the Broadcast Builder may be sufficient.

If you want to integrate audio into your offering you're probably talking about a podcast. This will involve creating an audio file in a common format (MP3) — very possibly directly from the narrative track of a presentation, and then encapsulating it in an audio blog (as a podcast).

If your content is video, then a tool like Serious Magic's VLOG-IT can enable you to drag and drop your video file into you blog editor, for easy content updates.

But in all of these cases the RSS "shell" around your XML code is what will allow an aggregator to subscribe to your feed so that blog items (whether text, audio or video) are accumulated by a user's aggregator. Then the user can either read the text directly in the aggregator or click the relevant links to listen to or view the content. Or if desired, download the content to listen to or view on a portable device.

Each of these are illustrative of the far reaching meaning of the concept of "presentation" — in each case an entity or company can make sure that its clients or associates have access to the very latest information, by creating a feed that enables users to subscribe directly and read, hear or watch the latest information in their web browser or RSS aggregator.

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