Unfortunately not every feed has an RSS file, not every diary has an ICS and not every site has a widget. Enter Dapper - a program from Yahoo which makes our dumb computers really think hard and work out what's what.
Dappertakes you through a (very) thorough process in order to produce the file your looking for. For example, for an RSS feed, users enter the source site, selecting RSS feed for the format.
Then feed dapper as many 'sample pages' as possible - pages of the same structure, but with different content, so dapper can work out what the user is interested in.
Next, to show dapper which fields you're interested in, click on a section and give it a name (for example, for a blog I might select the blog title, save it as 'title', then highlight the post and save it as 'text').
Finally, link up related fields (e.g. blog title and text) - Dapper often works this out for you - and save the 'dapp'.
Of course, this is all very hard to describe, so here's Dapper's own video demonstration for anyone who's interested.
Similar processes for calendars, google gadgets and more are available, based on the same idea. This tool has about as many uses as a rubber band - and when you think about it, there are many parallels to be drawn between them (or maybe I'm suffering from sleep deprivation). Happy dapping!
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