An alpha test of using RSS to deliver results from Google Video quietly began with a post to its newsgroup last week.
Google Drops Video Into RSS Feeds
Google delivered the news of the new test and cautioned that this first release needs feedback from its users. They have implemented parts of the Media RSS extension and want to make sure the new feeds are standards compliant.
The Google Video page does not have links to the feeds yet. The only place to grab the feeds is from their newsgroup post. One link brings the most popular videos to the feedreader, while the other delivers the feed of any video search results page.
Users can manually tweak the feeds. The “num” parameter can be set from 1 to 100, Google noted in its newspost. The “q” parameter should be familiar to anyone who has looked at a Google search URL; it represents the query the user made.
For example, a Video search for baseball can be made with this URL:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=baseball
Here’s how it looks as a RSS feed:
http://video.google.com/videofeed
?type=search&q=baseball&num=20&output=rss
A quick test of the feeds in Google Reader shows how they deliver the title, descriptive content, and a still image of the video. Clicking the image or the article URL brings up the Video Player with that video in play.
Video feeds should find advocates beyond sites like Google Video. The earliest adopters as users will be the more technically inclined, and it is easy to imagine movie and television studios taking advantage of the format to deliver a series of trailers and updates for a forthcoming project or ongoing series this way.
The medical field would be an interesting one to watch develop should it embrace video and RSS together. Imagine the Cleveland Clinic offering heart surgeons everywhere insights into newer procedures and treatments with video captured in the operating room, narrated later by the surgeon performing the procedure.
Businesses outside of the various entertainment industries may find ways to utilize video more, especially if they can build a subscriber base that can be measured. We invite our readers to discuss how they might use video and RSS at SyndicationPro.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
