Syndication Gumption

March Madness and Syndication

I love this time of the year. All the great match ups and amazing endings. There is so much hype especially around the MMOD (March Madness on Demand). Something seems to be missing. How about using RSS or iCalendar (Outlook 2003 folks need a plugin.) feeds to update fans about their favorite teams schedule, the schedule for entire conference, or all the games? Well, you are in luck. Madness Fans provides the addicted college hoops fan with RSS feeds or Calendar feeds for individual teams, conferences, regions, dates, or the entire schedule.

You can create as many feeds as you like. One for a conference, a couple of teams, and for a specific day. It’s up to you. First select the type (Team, Date, Conference, Venue, Seed, Region). Based on the selection, the second drop-down will change to reflect the appropriate options. Hit “Go” and the feed will be available below. Then subscribe to the the RSS feed (using Add This) and/or iCalendar feed (copy and paste into Google Calendar or click the link button for iCal/Apple). The feed contains the teams playing, approximate tip-off time (all EDT but should show up in your calendar correctly based on your time zone), and venue. As the tournament progresses, the feeds will be updated automatically. For a team feed, there next game, time, and foe will be added to the calendar… if they win . Same is true for the RSS feed.

This is just one example of what I talked about in a previous blog post (under Syndicate IQ) about the feed is the story. The Dallas Morning News had a feed for everything related to the Rita and Katrina hurricanes. A “Story Feed” can contain not only breaking news but video/audio reports, community reaction, volunteer needs, traffic and weather advisories, and much more. I help put together Madness Fans as a proof of concept to show what can be done to help folks organize and maintain the flow of information related to an event spanning multiple days/weeks. And for some, to keep up with their addiction.

Enjoy!

NOTE: Google calendar and our iCal feeds are not playing nice. We will get it figure out. Be patient. We put this together in less then 3 days (quarter-time) using Rails.

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Added on: March 14, 2007 with feedback from 1 folks
Tagged as: college basketball , feeds , final four , ical , icalendar , icalendar , march madness , rss , syndication ,
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Syndication Gumption breaks down the current state of syndication to help publishers, marketers, and search providers get a "common sense" education on what is possible, who might be stretching the truth, and what is just plain crap. Feedback greatly appreciated.