Though it may seem like everything has an RSS feed nowadays, lots of sites still lack the feature, leaving RSS fiends with no option but to actually surf the web (blasphemous!). Fortunately, there's Dapper: The Data Mapper, a web service that will take information from a site and package it in the form of your choice (RSS feeds, Google Maps, iCalendar, and more).
In order to create a "Dapp," or Dapper app, navigate to the Dapper site and click on "create a new Dapp." The next few steps are very interesting, requiring users to answer a variety of questions regarding the source of information. The answers will depend on the format you choose and the information you'd like to collect. Options include RSS, Dapp XML, Google Gadget and others. The process of creating a Dapp should be pretty easy if the user understands the concept of RSS.
It may seem like RSS feed creation is the most obvious function of the service, but it's in the more complex stuff that Dapper shines. You can, for example, have the latest YouTube search results for a given keyword appear in your iCalendar daily. The possibilities certainly aren't endless, but there are a lot of them.
[via Read Write Web]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-02-2008 @ 10:28AM
Arc|Angel said...
Interesting site. I tried it out to pull content from my local paper with Dapper (only major metropolis paper without an rss feed) and was successful in pulling in the headlines but not any links to the stories they go to. Will play some more and hope for the best!
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1-02-2008 @ 12:02PM
Rick Roberts said...
Sweet! MacMiner and MacSurfer, you have met your match.
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