> I'm sure this is a FAQ but is it only necessary to use a service like > Ping-o-matic as frequently as one updates an RSS?
It is actually not a FAQ, and there is no central place which tells you everything you need to know about pinging. I would like to write such a document, but my time is very precious right now. If someone would like to write it, I could host it in the articles section of Syndic8 (http://www.syndic8.com/article.php). Think of the ping as as signal, originating from your blog and sent out to the world at large, saying "I have been updated." If you change your RSS and you don't ping, then the world at large won't know until they re-fetch your RSS. Lots of tools (including those listed on the ping-o-matic home page) accept these pings and use them to initiate some action. Think of ping-o- matic as a 1:N distributor -- a single ping signal enters, and it is then echoed out to N receivers. Right now, Syndic8 does the following when it receives a ping on a feed that it already knows (a lot of other stuff happens for unknown feeds, but I won't go into that just now): 1 - Update the "last ping" field in the feed's record 2 - Fetch the feed 3 - Compare the feed, item-by-item, with the last stored version 4 - If there are no differences, record this as a bogus ping and stop 5 - Record this as a good ping <pause to think -- say more, or save it for later? /> Aw, what the heck -- time to roll out this cool new thing... Step 6 is new and experimental, and I am still making some changes to fine tune this for widespread public consumption: 6 - Publish all of this information to a real-time event router The event router is a public Apache module known as mod-pubsub; more information can be found at http://www.mod-pubsub.org/ . You can take a look at the event introspection application at http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/introspect/ to see this in action. Open up that app and navigate to /what/syndic8.com/news/items . Each thing in the items column is a single new news item. The items in the column to the right of that provide additional information. This may seem like jibberish to the uninitiated. A better demo will be forthcoming. So far, the latency from the time a ping arrives at Syndic8 until the time the new headline shows up in the introspector is around 1 second, limited mostly by the time needed to fetch the feed. Think about that for a second. You make a change to your blog, and 1 second later the whole world can know about it. Is this insanely great or what? Watch this space, I am a bit excited about the possibilities! Jeff; On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 18:59:46 -0000, "David Bradley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > I'm sure this is a FAQ but is it only necessary to use a service like > Ping-o-matic as frequently as one updates an RSS? > > db http://www.sciencebase.com > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/IRislB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To find more info about Syndicated XML newsfeeds visit http://www.syndic8.com Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndic8/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
