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You are not isolated with Socialtext. You can connect a Socialtext workspace to the rest of the Web. Socialtext provides a number of ways to connect a workspace to other dynamic web services.

Instant Messaging and Presence

Do you have an instant messaging service? A conferencing service? You can link directly from a Socialtext workspace to your profile, so your colleagues can reach you with a simple click! Here's how to do it:

AIM. aim:yourname

e.g. example

Yahoo! yahoo:yourname (alternatively: ymsgr:yourname)

e.g. example

Skype. skype:yourname (alternatively: callto:yourname)

e.g. example

Convoq ASAP. asap:yourname

e.g.

Google

A Socialtext Workspace makes it easy to keep the Web's best information inside your pages. You can place Google searches directly on a page. They will be constantly and automatically updated by Socialtext. For example, if you write {googlesoap social software}, it will show
 

Web feeds (RSS, Atom): in and out

Feeds go out

A Socialtext workspace lets you keep track of changes in a workspace by using an external newsreader without going back to the workspace. Socialtext supports both RSS and Atom, the most popular subscription formats. See the RSS Tutorial for details and uses. In Socialtext workspaces, both recent changes and weblogs have RSS feeds.

Subscribe to a Socialtext feed. This button https://www.socialtext.net/images/rss20.gif appears wherever RSS is available. To subscribe, click on it, copy the URL, and paste the URL into your news aggregator.

Most aggregators will immediately download entries from the subscription. Some aggregators will check for updates when they start, at hourly intervals or on the schedule you set to poll for the latest updates.

Password protection. If you are in a private, password-protected workspace, check your aggregator's instructions for authentication (password login).

SECURITY WARNING: Private, password-protected Socialtext workspaces also provide password protection for your subscription feeds. Some aggregators let you log in by putting your username and password in the URL (web address). Do not do this. This login method is not secure.

Feeds come in

Socialtext also enables you to display dynamic external data sources through subscriptions directly on pages. If you want to keep track of a client in the news or you want to keep track of yourself in the news, embedding a news ticker on their profile page is a great way to do it.

Other websites also will display the orange RSS button, https://www.socialtext.net/images/rss20.gif). If you click on that button, you will be shown the feed. Just copy the address from the browser's address bar. Say the address was

http://example.com/rss.xml

Then, you can subscribe to the feed headlines simply by writing

{fetchrss http://example.com/rss.xml}.

For example,

{fetchrss http://www.socialtext.com/weblog/rss.xml} will show recent headlines from the Socialtext blog:

To show the full text of a feed, write:

{fetchrss http://example.com/rss.xml full}

Note: While you can't import an RSS feed from another workspace, you can get the same results in a different way. To show a list of recently changed pages in a workspace, use {recent-changes <workspace>} where <workspace> is the name of the workspace to watch.

Technorati

Technorati is a weblog search service that searches millions of weblogs. Technorati provides a number of valuable services which are integrated into a Socialtext workspace.

• Technorati search. Do you want to know what other people are saying about you? If so, you can display the Technorati Cosmos of your website right in your workspace. This will show other weblogs which have recently mentioned your website. Simply write {technorati http://www.example.com}, using your website URL instead. For example, {technorati http://www.socialtext.com}.

• Weblog pings. If you want free publicity, public Socialtext Eventspaces can send "weblog pings" to Technorati or other weblog notification services. Pings update others you have recently mentioned that you are talking about them. Pings tie discussions across the whole Web together, which is a great way to stay close to your partners, clients, and customers. Best of all, Socialtext workspaces can do this automatically for you!

Note: Please speak to your Socialtext account manager to have weblog pings for Technorati and other web services enabled on your Eventspace.

• Tag links. Socialtext categories in Eventspace (public workspace) pages are automatically linked to other information resources with the same category using the new "tag links" syntax supported by Technorati, Flickr, del.icio.us and other web services. You don't have to do anything different to enable tag links, they are automatically generated when you place pages into Socialtext categories.

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