Create Voice-enabled RSS News Feeds

The proliferation of RSS feeds by state and local governments offers a unique opportunity to expand the delivery of the critical information by leveraging the most ubiquitous personal communications device in the world -- the telephone. Learn here how to transform RSS content into VoiceXML, an open standard for developing telephony applications, and dramatically expand the accessibility of your feeds by making them available to anyone with a telephone.

Posted on: 25 May 2005 | 1:01 pm

Fresh Patents Served Weekly

You can search for newly published patent applications at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, but if you want the latest patent applications served to you by RSS syndication and email alerts, you'll need to visit FreshPatents.com. Industry list RSS feeds filtered by USPTO class number are particularly valuable. The content is crawled and indexed by Google as well.

Posted on: 6 December 2004 | 5:33 pm

HubMed is PubMed on Steroids

If you're one who monitors the latest news about a drug or treatment, or if you're doing serious medical research, you'll absolutely love the assortment of alerts and exporting features provided by HubMed, an alternative search to the PubMed medical literature database.

Posted on: 5 December 2004 | 8:25 pm

Blog Revolution in China

While the government may not be enthusiastic over offering RSS news feeds, the Chinese people themselves are embracing RSS news syndication in the form of blogging. NewScientist.com reports that despite official censorship of blogs in 2003, blog services are now sprouting all over China. By the end of October 2004, China had more than 45 large blog-hosting services. According to China's biggest blogging service provider blogcn.com, the number of subscribers has soared from 10,000 in June last year, to more than 500,000 now. Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley reports the "blog revolution" is sweeping across China.

Posted on: 3 December 2004 | 1:01 pm

California a Dollar Short, a Day Late?

State CIO J. Clark Kelso wants to make government more accessible to the citizens of California. His November "California State Information Technology Strategic Plan" presented to Governor Schwarzenegger provides a blue-print for providing greater efficiences in IT services, offering more accessible service, and doing it for lower costs. What's missing? The plan neglects RSS, a low-cost, open source technology that many states are using to save money and make their services more accessible.

Posted on: 1 December 2004 | 1:41 am

Blog -- Dictionary Word of the Year

Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's reports that "Blog" tops their list of the 10 words of the year. Merriam-Webster Inc. said on Tuesday that blog, defined as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks," was the most looked-up word on its Internet sites this year. The list is compiled each year by taking the most researched words on its Web sites and then excluding perennials such as affect/effect and profanity. The company said most online dictionary queries were for uncommon terms, but people also turned to its Web sites for words in news headlines.

Posted on: 1 December 2004 | 1:12 am

Are you Chief Blogging Officer Material?

Does your state or agency have a Chief Blogging Officer? Government is already rife with chiefs, why not one more? HighBeam Research, Inc. has set the pace by announcing today the appointment of Christopher Locke as its Chief Blogging Officer (CBO). HighBeam also announces a pilot program offering a select group of bloggers exclusive use of its new "blog this document" tools and free access to the company's premium archives.

Posted on: 1 December 2004 | 12:41 am

Feeding the Utah Legal Community

The Utah Administrative Office of the Courts and the Utah State Bar have been experimenting with the syndication of news and publications for quite some time. They've now published links to their first public syndicated feeds on their homepages.

Posted on: 30 November 2004 | 7:00 pm

Friends, There is Good News

We interrupt this irregularly scheduled broadcast.... to share a message more momentous than we've reported on before. We bring a message of hope, of goodness, of peace, of universal brotherhood. Here's how we can join our voices in a global conversation that can forever change the world.

Posted on: 28 November 2004 | 5:32 pm

Google News Feed Generator

Unlike Yahoo, Google has had a long standing resistance to offering RSS feeds for Google News queries. In the spirit of pre-existing Google News to RSS hacks, Justin Pfister has now created "gnewsfeed." Filling out a form converts a Google news query into an RSS feed.

Posted on: 26 November 2004 | 10:28 am

Irish Local Governments Get Nooked

Two Irish County Councils and several other Irish, Northern Ireland, and UK government agencies are publishing press releases using the new Nooked hosted online RSS publishing service.

Posted on: 26 November 2004 | 12:09 am

Virginia Recognized for RSS Services

The State of Virginia was recently recognized by the Center for Digital Government with a third place ranking in the Best of the Web and Digital Government Achievement Awards. The recognition came largely for Virginia's new syndication and alert services. In accepting the award Governor Mark Warner said, "Our real-time online live help customer service continues to set the pace for the nation, and the portal's desktop alerts via live RSS feeds ensure that Virginia.gov users always have access to the most current information." The VIPNet portal and its RSS feeds are managed by the Virginia Information Providers Network. There are currently at least 34 feeds. Virginia uses RSS feeds not only for alerts, but also as a monitoring service that keeps citizens informed of new resources and services added to the portal.

Posted on: 21 November 2004 | 11:36 pm

RSS News Feeds From State.gov

The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs now provides RSS feeds for top stories from the State Department homepage, daily press briefings, press releases, and remarks by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Posted on: 31 October 2004 | 7:22 pm

RSS Feeds from Delaware

The State of Delaware has two new RSS newsfeeds for agency news and press releases and proposed and final state government regulations. The feeds are featured by links right off the state's homepage, Delaware.gov.

Posted on: 5 October 2004 | 9:47 pm

Utah Elected Officials Invited to Blog

It's been long overdue, but enterprising individuals are now realizing the potential market for hosting blogs for elected officials and those running for office. Utahpolicy.com announced today a new service inviting Utah politicos to communicate with the public using the new Utah Policymaker Blog.

Posted on: 29 September 2004 | 7:20 pm