Aggregator

An aggregator or news aggregator is a type of software that retrieves syndicated Web content that is supplied in the form of a web feed (RSS, Atom and other XML formats), and that are published by weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites.

What do aggregators do?

Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites of interest for updates, creating a unique information space or "personal newspaper." An aggregator is able to subscribe to a feed, check for new content at user-determined intervals, and retrieve the content. The content is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the subscriber, as opposed to "pushed" with email or IM. Unlike recipients of some "pushed" information, the aggregator user can easily unsubscribe from a feed.

Aggregator features are gradually being built into portal sites such as My Yahoo! and Google; Web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera; e-mail programs like Mozilla Thunderbird; and other applications, including Apple's iTunes, which serves as a podcast aggregator.

The aggregator provides a consolidated view of the content in a single browser display or desktop application. Such applications are also referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators or news readers, although in Internet communication, the last of these terms was first used for programs that read Usenet newsgroups.

A website may incorporate aggregator features by republishing syndicated content on one or more of its pages. Aggregator features also may be incorporated in other client software, including Web browsers, e-mail clients, weblog creation programs, or media player programs. Devices such as mobile phones or Tivo video recorders (already aggregating television programs) may incorporate XML aggregators.

The syndicated content an aggregator will retrieve and interpret is usually supplied in the form of RSS or other XML-formatted data, such as RDF/XML or Atom.

Clouds

A small number of news aggregators have the ability to register to clouds, a web service that notifies the aggregator of updates to a feed, eliminating the need for periodic polling. This approach attempts to produce a more efficient use of bandwidth, though the overhead associated with registering a cloud can mean no net savings. It also introduces issues of scalability and a single point of failure among others. In the time since the cloud concept was introduced in 2000, very few sources have implemented it.

Aggregator categories

Online version

The online version of this type of software is a website service selling or providing aggregation services for free; these sites are normally provided by ISPs and internet portals. The RSS feeds allow users to check recently changed versions in comparison to previous updates. This allows only 'fresh data' to be viewed, reducing bandwidth demands on the provider's hardware and users. Because the aggregator is online, it can be accessed anywhere by any user who is connected to the internet. More advanced ways of integrating feeds are provided by Ajax desktops, which allow users to aggregate OPML files, email services and documents in Writely as well as feeds in a single interface.

Lately a very big number of online news aggregator made their way on our Internet search results. The success of the technology comes from two perspectives:

• first - a large amount of online content can be but together in a short period of time and that is what most of search engines out there like;

• second – the advertising capabilities can be enormous as the ad content can be delivered more targeted and “by the second”.

Computer version

The desktop version of this type of software is designed to satisfy the task of controlling subscriptions and supervising the RSS feeds that the user has selected. The GUI of this type of software is normally a three-panel composition-like communication software like for instance an e-mail client, but browser versions are available -- normally run on a LAN. Publication is made through web-servers so that global access is possible. Additional facilities may be integrated into aggregators such as audio players, blog editors, internet browsers and e-mail clients.

OEM/Meta news feeds

These feeds provide aggregation services to news portals and search engines, not necessarily direct to end users. Usually, to integrate feeds to a HTML page a combination of JavaScript/XML/AJAX technology is used.

External links

HTTP clients | Web syndication