AGI Applications & NPD Team Blog: RSS, Gadgets, and Bots, Oh My!

The blog is the place where the AGI Applications & NPD Team lives. Here, you can see what’s new with the team, engage in discussion with our people and other technology aficionados, and suggest things you’d like to see AG Interactive get into. Our first project was the Kiwee Beta postCard Maker... but we have evolved since then to support various innovations (including websites, social network apps, mobile apps, desktop software) for AG Interactive.

RSS, Gadgets, and Bots, Oh My!

Windows Live (currently in Beta mode) will provide a huge opportunity to merchandise our content via Gadgets and RSS feeds. Beyond Windows Live, RSS and Bots may provide even further merchandising opportunities. I'd like to take some time to investigate each of these topics for our next presentation.

Gadgets - Gadgets are snippets of code that give extra functionality to the Live desktop. They consist of an XML-based manifest file, JavaScript, and CSS which leverage the Altas Framework.

RSS - RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of sites. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" of a linelist, a changes on the site, whatever. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.

Bots - Bots are a type of computer program to automate tasks. There are serveral tutorials published to create IM bots for MSN and AIM.

Tomorrow we will be spending 1/2 hour reviewing these topics in further detail.

Please being to investigate each of these topics for thoughts on implementation and opportunities.

Reference Links:

Live in Beta Mode: http://www.live.com/
Building a Gadget: http://microsoftgadgets.com/blogs/gadgetnews/articles/1019.aspx
RSS 2.0: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
Building a Bot: http://www.interconnected.org/googlematic/

1 Comments:

At 8:29 PM , Matt Wilson said...: Bots: maybe we could have a wink preview bot that will play a wink of the day/week/whatever to whoever asks.

Or, once people add the agbot to their friends list, we can push ads directly.