Create RSS Feeds From Static Content Using Dapper

If you have used RSS to gather content from around the web you will appreciate this gem of a tool. Have you ever wished that every site could be read through an RSS feed? Dapper.net provides a service that you will want to try out. Let me tell you a little more about my experience with Dapper and one really cool way to use Dapper.

As you may be fully aware RSS enables you set up feeds (kind of like tubes:) containing content from around the web. An RSS feed is available on a page if you see a symbol as shown in the following image.

As an exercise find one of the RSS feeds on my page and subscribe to it, good job. Dapper allows you to create RSS feeds from static content found on pages around the web, pages that don’t have RSS feeds. As you can imagine, this is a really valuable tool to learn how to use. Dapper.net enables you to “highlight” static content and create a feed.

You may also be pleased to know that you can create RSS alerts, Flash widgets, Google gadgets, Netvibes modules, and more cool syndicating devices in just a few steps. If you visit Dapper.net make sure that you watch the tutorial, sign up for a free account, and experiment with the site and everything that it can do for you. I created a Flash widget. If you look to the right on my blog you may see a red widget with the titles of this blogs most recent posts, the flash widget code for my site titles can be embedded on other sites too. I created the Flash widget in a very short time (after I went and watched the tutorials), once I figured out what I was doing.

So, this is a great and powerful tool, there are a variety of ways that you can leverage the tool to make your life easier. I conducted a very simple test to see how the alert function worked within Dapper. I logged in and created a Dapper to monitor the title on the front page of my search marketing agency site. I set up a Dapper alert to notify me if the title of my page changed, I also set the alert to notify me within an hour of the occurrence. After I had the Dapper alert set up I accessed my site content, changed the headline, and was alerted to the change about 45 minutes later.

Now I know what you may be thinking. Why would I want to be alerted if I changed the title on my own page? Well, in this case I was running a test. I wouldn’t normally use a Dapper alert on my own content, I usually already know when my content is going to update. But I don’t know when other sites content is going to update, and that information may be really valuable to me.

For me, Dapper took a little getting used to. I spent an hour or so watching the tutorials and playing around with the site before I had a good understanding of basic usage. There are a lot of great applications that are not covered in this blog, and there are a lot of ways that you can use Dapper in advanced ways. What kind of content would you like to monitor? How would you use Dapper? Let me know what you think.