Clip Feeding

Advanced > Miscellaneous Functions > Automatic Update Check / ClipMate News > Clip Feeding

Clip Feeding combines our new XML Import capability with our RSS-drivenupdate checker. Instead of just checking for program updates, ClipMate's update checker can display tips, offers, alerts, and newsletters. In ClipMate 7.1, we've extended it to allow CLIPS to be sent. Then we extended it again to allow multiple feeds of data, so that ClipMate users can publish their own data feeds, and other users can subscribe to them.

This will have a myriad of uses, such as, but not limited to:

•	Publishing lists of jokes, anecdotes, quotes, recipes

•	Syndicated feeds for technical, legal, medical or professional information

•	Database Updates for remote users in a workgroup

•	Test Clips for technical support purposes.

Subscribing

First, find a feed. We will hopefully have some available on our forum. You need the URL (HTTP only) and description of the feed. Then use the Settings page of the Update Check dialog to add a new feed. Now exit that page, and go Help | ClipMate News And Updates (in either ClipMate Classic or Explorer) and you should see the new feed. Check it, and if there are articles, you can download and import the clip feed with just a few clicks. The automatic updater will let you know when new content is available.

Publishing

First, export some clips using the XML Export dialog. Next, rename the file, keeping "ClipMate" as the first part of the file name, and it must have an extension of .XML.
ex: ClipMate_Jokes_Sept2006.XML

Then you need to move that file to a web server, where it will be accessible to your subscribers.

Now you need to create an RSS/XML "feed" that describes the data. This is directly analogous to Podcasting, where the podcast XML describes the audio file, which is contained as an "enclosure", which is usually an URL to the MP3 file. In our case, we've got the descriptor XML (the "cast") that contains an enclosure with the URL to the ClipMate Export XML file. It may seem unwieldily to have two XML files to do one job, but this is the standard RSS approach, and allows the user to download the description quickly, and then decide whether or not to download the enclosed "payload". You can view a sample RSS file here on our server. It can be edited with any text editor, but we make ours with FeedForAll, a terrific RSS creation tool. Then, upload the RSS file to your site, and tell your subscribers about it.