zaphod beeblebrox RSS feed

Zaphod Beeblebrox - the original club at the Edge of the Universe, has also been the original Ottawa nightclub on the Edge of the Internet. Since it's inception, in 1997, www.zaphodbeeblebrox.com (and it's predecessor - www.eugenehaslam.com) has lead the way with a number of Ottawa firsts:

First Ottawa nightclub with a dedicated web site
First Ottawa based Indie Band Database (still one of the largest in Canada with over 600 artist entries)
First Opt-in Opt-out Concert Mailing List in Ottawa
First comprehensive on-line Ottawa Media contact list for local and visiting artists
First Ottawa nightclub with a comprehensive list of memorable shows
... and more

Now, Zaphod Beeblebrox is please to present another Ottawa first, the latest in shared media provision; the RSS feed.

What's that?

Think about all of the information that you access on the Web on a day-to-day basis; news headlines, search results, "What's New", job vacancies, and so forth. A large amount of this content can be thought of as a list; although it probably isn't in HTML <li> elements, the information is list-oriented.

To provide you with this information, Zaphod's site is making an RSS feed, or channel, available, just like any other file or resource on our server. This feed will feature our Concert Announcements and will be updated on a random basis as concerts are announced. Computers can now fetch the file to get the most recent items on the list. Most often, people will do this with an aggregator, a program that manages a number of lists and presents them in a single interface, such as Headline Viewer or the web based News Is Free. Other uses include Portal type sites who are aggregating content for re-distribution. In either case, we invite you to take advantage of the Zaphod's RSS feed today.

The Zaphod'S RSS feed may be accessed via: http://www.zaphodbeeblebrox.com/RSS/index.rdf.
A partially formatted feed may also be linked via: http://www.zaphodbeeblebrox.com/RSS/zaphod.php

Geek Talk

RSS is an XML-based format (using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) - a language for representing information about resources in the World Wide Web) that allows the syndication of lists of hyperlinks, along with other information, or metadata, that helps viewers decide whether they want to follow the link. RSS allows peoples' computers to fetch and understand the information, so that all of the lists they're interested in can be tracked and personalized for them. It is a format that's intended for use by computers on behalf of people, rather than being directly presented to them (like HTML).

More information on RSS, RDF and implementing RSS feeds into your web site may be found at:

Zaphod's webmaster also has a basic PHP script available upon request. Contact him at webmaster@zaphodbeeblebrox.com for more information.