June 12, 2008 by Michael Sauers

Google AJAX Feed API – Dynamic Feed Control Wizard

I’m a fan of Feed2JS and FeedDigest so I was skeptical that this one would be any different. Also, there are other tools that will make RSS-based tickers but those are mostly ad supported. This one is different in two ways.

First, it’s not directly ad supported. The resulting widget does display a Google logo but many libraries aren’t against that as opposed to more traditional ads for companies and/or services. (In this case, the Google logo is less an ad, more a credit for the service being used.)

Secondly, you don’t need to know the URL of the feed you’re sourcing. As shown in the screenshot below, I was able to pull in content from my blog, Tame the Web, and the NLC’s blog just by typing in their names. Google automatically did a search and found the feed URLs for me. How slick is that?

And here’s the result:

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I’ll definitely be covering this tool in my RSS presentation at Internet Librarian this year.

Google AJAX Feed API – Dynamic Feed Control Wizard via RSS4LIB

Published by Michael Sauers

Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year. View all posts by Michael Sauers

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