Smarterware » Pushbutton Web

How to PubSubHubbub-Enable Your Site’s Feed

Gina Trapani — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:24:51 +0000

My tip on the latest episode of This Week in Google is how to enable real-time updates of your site's feed to FriendFeed (right now), and more services like Google Reader as they release support for PubSubHubbub in the future. If you missed the instructions on the podcast, here they are in bookmarkable text. It's very simple for blogs which use Feedburner for their feeds.

In Feedburner, click on the feed name you want to PSHB-enable. From the Publicize tab, click on PingShot in the left hand column of available services. Click on "activate" (see screenshot). Once this is done and your feed refreshes, you can view its source and see rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com" attributes. This means that when you publish a new post, Feedburner will let the hub know, which will in turn notify subscribers in real-time. Here are these same instructions from the horse's mouth. If Feedburner's not your thing, there's also a WordPress plug-in which will do this for you.

New Tech Gets Deployed “the Web Way”

Gina Trapani — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:38:50 +0000

Anil Dash makes the compelling argument that small incremental upgrades using easily-hackable technologies is the most effective way to get new features deployed across the web--as opposed to installing monolithic, multi-requirement software like Google Wave. When it comes to realtime-enabling sites, the Pushbutton web uses "the web way," and Google Wave will go "the Wave way." Which will succeed? Only time will tell, but these days I'm just as (if not more) excited about Pushbutton technologies I can easily turn on on my web site than Wave.

The Pushbutton Web Now in Google Reader

Gina Trapani — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 05:29:44 +0000

There's no doubt in my mind that Anil Dash has a crystal ball stowed away somewhere at his place back in NYC. While his piece on the Pushbutton web almost two weeks ago was inspiring in concept, it's exhilarating to see it come to fruition.

(Seriously, if you haven't read his piece, GO THERE NOW: The Pushbutton Web: Realtime Becomes Real. I'll wait.)

Back? With me? Good.

Tonight, Googler Mihai Parparita announces that Google Reader now sends realtime updates to FriendFeed when you share items using the PubSubHubbub protocol.

Huh-wha? you ask. Yeah, I know. It's no Google Wave. But that's what makes this exciting. This kind of small Pushbutton implementation is how real web pages will easily use existing technology to notify one another of new updates. The Google Reader/FriendFeed integration is just the first tiny step in what will be a broad deployment of realtime-enabled sites. These sites and services will let one another know when they have new data to share without the sucky inefficiencies of polling. Check out how fast FriendFeed updates when you share an item in Google Reader in this video.

In short, it's almost zero latency.

I've been lurking on the PSHB mailing list for a few weeks now. I've enabled pinging to Google's open hub on Smarterware's feed. (XML nerds, note the rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com" attributes in my Atom.) This means posts from here should show up in realtime on both FriendFeed and, according to this demo video, Google Reader (though my tests show GReader does not work right now). To enable PubSubHubbub pinging on your feed, you just need to check a box over in FeedBurner. Here's a helpful howto on doing that. For more, check out Google's own post on the subject, What's all the hubbub about PubSubHubbub? and Dave Winer's breakdown.

This is just the beginning of what might be done with publishers (like you) pushing new updates/tweets/blog posts/whatevers to your subscribers in under a second via a hub or cloud. We're talking about real-time cloud computing that doesn't depend upon centralized servers or technology owned by one company here. Sounds good, doesn't it?

(Speaking of Google Reader, I've been having a ball with its sharing feature this week. Here's a page of my shared items or you can get it with instantaneous updates on FriendFeed.)

PubSubHubbub support for Reader shared items [Google Reader Blog]