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August 18, 2004
Is there a Need for RSS Feeds from Tufts?
Today I started thinking about how we might offer RSS feeds to the people who use the Tufts University Sciences Knowledgebase (TUSK).
When a user first logs into TUSK we display, in a portal-like way, the announcements, list of content recently viewed by all users in a group, recently updated content, recent postings to the forums etc. I can imagine the student who would want to stick the RSS feed into their aggregator and during certain times throughout the semester keep an eye on the changes happening in his or her relevant groups or courses.
The major issue is we require secure authentication for access to the information. I can think of a few options:
- dummy down the information so only titles show, like a linkblog, so authentication isn't necessary to get the feeds
- require a SSL-enabled browser-based RSS reader - the user logs into the site and then all feeds are based on the TUSK cookie
- hope, request, push for aggregators to allow user to authenticate for certain sites
Right now it seems somewhat frivolous, but will have to keep it in the back of my mind and perhaps will develop into something down the road.
Posted by mike at August 18, 2004 1:43 PM