Edited:
download this new version http://www.geocities.com/athma_shakti/rssread_all.zip
this enhanced reader will support all the browsers including IE, firefox, netscape, opera.
other browsers like firefox is checking xsl and dtd for rssfeed.asp
i got the error “not well-formed” its pointing the DTD file related to rssfeed.asp that needs to be corrected for the reader to work.
Hi AthmaShakti:
It works!
Excuse me for asking, but isn’t all of this RSS stuff redundant with the more robust forum “active topics” feature, which can be bookmarked by anyone?
On the HTML side, all new AYP lessons are transmitted via Yahoo group email. Anyone who wants them hot off the press can sign up for email delivery on Yahoo. New lessons are also announced on the website homepage, which links to a reverse chronological index of lessons for easy reference from the present going backwards. This is in addition to the chronological lesson indices on the website (links above). I am told setting up RSS for HTML can be a big job, something completely different from the forum RSS. How much additional navigation will be gained per hour of setup work?
Navigation has been a priority as AYP has grown, and that is why we have all that has been mentioned, plus topic index, site search, etc.
It is still not clear what practical addition this exciting and time consuming RSS discussion is leading to. Well, maybe the forum RSS holds some promise, though redundant, as mentioned, and a little tedious. 
The guru is in you.
Hi Yogani,
“All will be revealed …!”
Patiently continue your study (Googling technology terms), and your daily practices (spending time online), and before long, you will notice a new conductivity (aka enthusiasm) arising in your system (“Hey, this weird acronym-heavy Web technology is really kinda cool!”) combined with a silent awareness of deeper technology truth (“Whoa … I understand RSS! I really do! On to SaaS, SOA, AJAX, Etc. Etc. Etc.”)
This awareness and energy is not to be found solely in people such as Athma Shakti, Ruirib and myself – but is in you, as well.
And formal teachers of technology are no longer needed (“Google is our friend.”) - you can chart your own course, and captain your own development - for in reality, the technology geek with the answers is not “out there” somewhere …
The geek is in you.
PNW2*,
Kirtanman
*Peace, Namaste & Web 2.0 - I had to work a tech-ish acronym into the sign-off, somehow!
THIS POST HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE “SORRY I HAD TO” DEPARTMENT OF KIRTANMAN’S MIND.
Hi Yogani, Athma Shakti and All,
Okay - now that I got that other post out of my system, here are my “serious” thoughts:
ACTIVE TOPICS / RSS
I admit that I was not really converse with what Active Topics was all about – and admittedly, it could be bookmarked and/or set as someone’s home page, and (pretty much, it appears) provide the same information that the RSS feed provides. Please note, though, that this is just one side of the RSS coin - with the other side being potentially far more important to promoting AYP (more on that in a minute.)
YAHOO! NOTIFICATION OF NEW LESSONS
I was not aware that email notification for new lessons was still available via Yahoo! (and I scouted the AYP Home Page for reference to this “handy feature” and didn’t see anything) - I had thought that “things Yahoo” had gone the way of the Dodo bird, as far as AYP is concerned.
AYP “ONLINE RESOURCES” PAGE?
Per those two points, maybe we should do an “Intro to AYP Online Resources” page, or something similar — I’ll be more than happy to help / take the lead with respect the content for that (and, unless there are any other resources I’m not aware of, I think I know most of them - and can run a draft list by Yogani for approval before it’s published).
OTHER MAJOR BENEFITS OF RSS
As previously discussed, an RSS feed produces content that is much more like an “active channel” than a static web page. If desired, the AYP RSS Feed(s) can be added to services like Feedburner (some money is involved; no idea how much - but not a lot – personal bloggers set up feeds for things like their hamster’s maternity updates - so it can’t cost too much.)
I believe there are RSS services that “sniff” for feeds, and can / will “pick-up” the AYP Feeds - at zero cost to AYP (not counting super-minimal bandwidth increase – in the same way that new site visitors use a tiny amount of bandwidth, per person, per visit.)
RSS BENEFITS IN A NUTSHELL
RSS allows other people who are interested in AYP content for (potentially) a variety of reasons, to provide content that is automatically, dynamically updated through their web site or blog.
EXAMPLE: I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for a while – and you can bet I’ll add the AYP RSS feed(s) when I do.
As far as I know, with the Active Topics page, the best I could do would be to provide a link to that page – where, with RSS, I can provide the actual content, displayed as all or part of a page on my blog (many - possibly most - blogs and web sites that are providing world news, or “industry news” of a specific type - are doing so via transparent RSS feeds that they’ve added — and yoga / spiritual / health sites can do the same with the AYP feeds.
As tedious as it may have been (and apologies for any contributions I’ve made to that aspect …) — RSS Feeds are set up, “switched on” - and then become an essentially automatic (from the AYP side) for AYP to be promoted globally.
No one has to talk with anyone “at AYP” - they just add the feed(s).
This allows AYP content to spread in a “viral marketing” manner, that is 100% “opt in” (nothing invasive or “spammish” in any way).
For instance, let’s say that my (potential) blog becomes popular as a resource for - oh, I dunno - chanting in Sanskrit, for instance (kirtan is growing in popularity, and there aren’t many kirtan resources out there).
So, yoga studios and practitioners around the world, add my kirtan RSS feed(s) (which, being a big RSS fan, I will of course set up ) to their sites and blogs - and as a result visit my blog — where they are exposed to the AYP RSS feed(s) — which they can then add to their sites and blogs.
“They tell a friend – who publishes dynamic AYP content (RSS Feeds), who tells a friend – who publishes dynamic AYP content, who tells a friend – who publishes dynamic AYP content …”
KEY POINT
And sure, this can be done via links to the Active Topics page - but in that case, someone has to be motivated to click the link – with RSS, they can see the actual content of the feed – which is (clearly, I think) a much better “advertisement” for AYP than a link alone would be.
So, all in all – this may turn out to be kind of fortuitous (if I had been a little more clear on the whole Active Topics thing, we may not have ended up having the RSS Feed(s) created – not to mention this enjoyable conversation!
Peace & Namaste,
Kirtanman
PS - Once again MAJOR thanks to Athma Shakti, and whoever else did “behind the scenes” work, here (Ruirib?).
PPS - Future site-oriented conversations will probably not need to be so tedious — this (RSS) required a lot of extra explanation, and I was admittedly more verbose than needed, as I often am - and will take full responsibility for that, moving forward.
It’s one thing if I’m “riffing” on certain yoga-related experiences (in other sections of the Forum) - but since this is an administrative section, dedicated to the growth of AYP - I’ll do my best to respect everyone’s time by self-editing more carefully, moving forward.
I will have to give up yoga for this, and move into one of those tech caves where they slide a pizza under the door once a day.
TGIIY
PS: By all means, go out there and build lots of feeds to AYP! 
Thanks for the hearty laugh Yogani.
I will have to give up yoga for this, and move into one of those tech caves where they slide a pizza under the door once a day.
TGIIY
Ah ... he's seen the (flourescent) light! They have lots of those caves around here - aka the Engineering Department of various technology (you'd be hard-pressed to throw a rock in Silicon Valley and *not* hit an engineering cave of some sort. And - wait - there's more ---- FREE Dr. Pepper, with the pizza. Diet _and_ Regular. Regarding stability, the old joke goes like this: If a Silicon Valley Engineer wants a different job, what's the one thing he has to do? "Pull into a different parking lot." And then there's those really big paychecks and bonuses you'd have to put up with .... Maybe better to stay on the the World Leader of the Advanced Open Source Yoga Practices World. I mean, it may pay less for now -- but I'm guessing the gig is usually without a lot of stress (compared "project deliverables", budgets, etc. that Silicon Valley engineers have to content with (or, at least, it's peaceful until the next time somebody throws out a barely familiar tech acronym, and everything goes scooters for a few days ....) :wink: Peace & Namaste, Kirtanman
Hi Yogani
Sure active topics can also be used.
yes various enhancements and navigation capabilities can be done in both sides(user/server).
it seems RSS may not be compatible here.
It was a good team work from all of us. I thanx for everyone in this thread, Yogani, RSS generators(is an intricate process), and Kirtanman who took the initiative.
Hi AthmaShakti:
Thanks much for the work you have done on this. I hope you will leave the RSS reader up there on Geocities for anyone who would like to download it. Perhaps someday we will get into customized RSS to show things that are not easily accessible in the forums now. Obviously, a 10 post history is not going to cover everything that has gone on even in one day’s time, but I’m sure there are things RSS can do that “active topics” cannot. Your work will not go to waste. Nothing ever does, especially in our yoga practices.
All the best!
The guru is in you.
PS – Kirtanman, make my pizza veggie, and hold the onions. Juice is preferred over soda. How do they get the drink under the door?
Well, as I imagine you have some knowledge concerning:
Killing all the mystery would take the fun out of it, yes?
By the way: “TGIIY” - I love it! (the “g” meaning – “either-or”, “both-and”, “my guru is kind of geeky”, “that geek is a guru!” … etc. etc., ipso facto, so on and so forth.)
In fact, Silicon Valley is probably one of the few places on the planet (along with Austin, Texas and a few other choice locales, including, of course, these days - Bangalore) where someone can say, “Our Oracle Guru is that geeky dude over there …” – and not have anyone within earshot be confused or offended - or thinking that the geeky dude can predict their future enlightenment …
TGIIY - YAVA*, fer shure.
(Yet Another Versatile Acronym!)
And for those of you dying for more techie trivia:
Did you know YAHOO! is actually an acronym?
… Yet Another Hierarchical Organizational Order.
Yes, really — back when the Web was small enough, that Jerry and David (guys who founded Yahoo!) thought it could all be logically stored in a folder structure, as on a PC.
And by the way, Yogani – I do know the secret (answer) to your question …
Q. How do they get the drink under the door?
A. Easy. They put the door on the far side of the vending machines!
True Story: I was visiting a VP of Engineering at a networking products company during Boom 1.0 (mid to late nineties) - and noticed that not only were there vending machines containing just about everything imaginable - including (for vending machines) healthy stuff, including juice. Also laundry drop-off areas for laundry and dry-cleaning, and large signs with phone numbers for pizza, and the “concierge” (to cover everything else an engineer might need …).
I was raising my eyebrows and making increasing loud “Hmm” type noises - to which the VP (deadpan) responded:
“We don’t want them to leave. Ever.”
Ah, the good old days (or not …)
Peace & Namaste,
Kirtanman
I am glad to see there has been some discussion around RSS some 15 months back. For the past several weeks, I have been hunting around the AYP forum for an RSS feed since it would be SO much more convenient than poking around all over the place for new and interesting content. This is true even with the Active Topics link.
Kirtanman has done a great job already of presenting why RSS would be so much nicer way to get this wonderful content to consumers out there. RSS readers are now built into browsers and web-based readers like Google Reader which I use are commonplace.
After poking around a lot, I found there was actually an unadvertised link (http://aypsite.org/forum/rssfeed.asp) that would allow one to subscribe to an RSS feed of AYP. Unfortunately this is not advertised anywhere. I suggest that this link be made available as part of the standard header that is displayed on every page on the site.
Hi Jupiter:
Thanks for bringing this up. If RSS is something that can be useful to the readership, I’ll be happy to add a link on all the website and forum pages, perhaps near the top of the right-hand border.
I am a few years behind most folks with technology here, hopefully making up for it in other ways. 
What does the RSS link you found show? Is it one that would be useful to readers for keeping up with new forum postings? I don’t recall who created it, and would not know how to edit it or make a better one, if needed. Do you know how?
Thanks!
The guru is in you.
PS: The RSS Feed link has been added to the upper right corner of all website and forum pages. Thanks much for the heads up, Jupiter!
How does it work? When I click on the link, I just get a page that says “This feed contains code errors.”
Hi Echo:
From what little I know, you need a late model browser (Firefox 2.0 can be downloaded for free), Google Reader (add the feed link as a new subscription there), or other live feed reader.
Firefox 2.0 works here and it updates new posts immediately. Google Reader works here too but has not been updating immediately.
I am sure others with experience can add useful pointers.
Good luck!
The guru is in you.
Thanks for that. It works for me now, in Firefox, but not Outlook or IE. I think I’m getting a little behind the times!
Fantastic! Thanks Yogani for adding the RSS link to the header.
If you (the forum reader) are new to RSS and wondering what an RSS reader might look like, here is a screenshot of my Google RSS Reader showing the AYP RSS feed.
http://snipurl.com/21wj0 (this link will be available until May 1, 2008).
Also, I suggest folks look up RSS on the web to learn more about it. The Wikipedia is a good place to start. Here is a link to the RSS entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
Yogani, the current link seems to be working reasonably well. I will look into whether we need to update the feed (for RSS 2.0 for example) and also see if Snitz Forums offers anything in this regard. For now though, the current link seems functional and very useful as it is.
One minor thing to consider adding… RSS feeds are typically noted with a special icon. If you see the Wikipedia article, it shows this standard icon everyone uses to depict an RSS feed. We can consider putting this icon right next to the link you have added. Here is a link to the RSS icon that is widely used - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Feed-icon.svg/16px-Feed-icon.svg.png.
Thanks much, Jupiter.
The Google Reader does not update the feed in real time here like Firefox does. Only every few hours.
We have had some intermittent delays with the RSS link. That is being looked at, so bear with us.
I will see about adding the icon.
How are live feeds shared in social networks, etc? Can you offer some advice on that to AYP forum readers? The more we can spread this around (ethically and legally), the better.
All the best!
The guru is in you.