Metadata modules
More and more feed publishers are now embedding specialized information in their feeds
such as licensing details, geocodes,
or publisher-specific metadata (e.g. Digg or
Furl). Thing is, most feed readers simply ignore it all
because they don't even realize it's there 
Metadata modules let Awasu extract custom information out of a feed's XML
and store it in the archive database, attached to the item in which it was found.
From the Advanced page of the Program Options dialog, click on the Metadata modules button
and turn on the ones you want Awasu to process. Channels will now be checked for
additional metadata which will be shown in the channel summary pages.
A demo feed and screenshots of the metadata modules in action can be found here.
You must have MSXML installed
to use this feature.
More information
In its simplest form, metadata modules let Awasu recognize new microformats
and other RSS extensions as they come out without having to wait for us to update Awasu
to support them. Metadata modules for extensions currently in common use, such as
slash:comments and wfw:commentRss, are automatically installed with Awasu.
However, there are much more powerful applications of metadata modules that open up
some intriguing possibilities, especially in a corporate environment. While some feed readers
have support built into them for the more popular RSS extensions, that's not much use
if the one you want is not recognized or even worse, if the feed is using your own proprietary extensions
since there's no way a feed reader will be updated to recognized it.
Metadata modules let you publish feeds with your own specific information embedded in them
and then extract it at the client side. Combined with channel hooks
that can analyze this custom information and act upon it, metadata modules form the basis
for our vision of RSS as a transport mechanism for information.
|
