supermassive info

About Supermassive

Supermassive is a news discovery portal built on a modified version of the MagpieRSS software for PHP. Supermassive syndicates headlines, images, audio, and video from a small list of the best online RSS sources, including Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Flickr, VideoSurf, topical blogs, MP3 podcasts, and other network news services. The primary purpose of the Supermassive news portal is to present a clean and concise snapshot of the current internet media landscape in a browsing period of ten minutes or less. The Supermassive news portal is a non-commercial public news and media service provided by Supermassive.NET, a web services and internet media consulting company based in Seattle, Washington.

Feed Selection Criteria

The RSS feeds featured on Supermassive are chosen based on the criteria of timeliness, relevance, media richness, and proper RSS formatting. Feeds that are updated multiple times a day are more likely to be included than those with infrequent updates. Feeds that are relevant to section topics are preferred over feeds that are difficult to classify. Feeds which include thumbnails, image links, audio enclosures (podcasts), or embedded video in the descriptions are preferred over plain text feeds. And finally, feeds must have a properly formatted publish date or create date for each item. Feed are accepted in RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, ATOM, and most common XML formats.

Adding a feed to Supermassive

If you have an RSS feed you would like to include on Supermassive, copy and paste the RSS link into the search box on any Supermassive page. When you click the search icon your feed will appear in the Supermassive reader, including thumbnail images, audio enclosures, and video enclosures. If you like the way your feed looks on our site, and want to consider it for inclusion, e-mail your RSS link to feeds@supermassive.com. All feeds will be considered based on our selection criteria. You will be notified by e-mail if and when your feed is accepted and appears on the site. You may also send us a note if you want to include your site but need help troubleshooting the way your RSS feed appears in the Supermassive reader.

RSS Feed Exclusion

RSS feeds will be automatically excluded for any of the following reasons: spam; phishing; pornography; offensive or obscene material; multiple posting or reposting of outdated or irrelevant content; commercial sales or classified ad feeds; chat or comments feeds; redundant feeds; and feeds with improper RSS formatting. Please do not submit your feed if it meets any of these exclusionary rules.

If you would like to have your feed deleted from our service, please e-mail us with your feed link at feeds@supermassive.com.

Feed Topic Selection

Topics are selected based on feed availability and media richness. New topics will be considered if they can be supported by at least three current news feeds, one recurring audio podcast, and one current video feed. If you would like to suggest a new topic, please e-mail feeds@supermassive.com with the topic name and five sample feeds for that topic from multiple sources.

Terms of Media Syndication, Display, and Caching

RSS feeds syndicated in the Supermassive reader will include the feed title, the feed description, a feed image thumbnail, a headline for each news item, a source domain for each news item, an age for each news item, a link for each news item, a shortened text description for each news item, one thumbnail image per news item, a pop-up image if a large image is included, any embedded audio enclosures for each news item, and one video link per item. Video links will appear from common services, such as YouTube or VideoSurf; from MP4 video enclosures; or from a video object encoded into the item description. Embedded video objects will play in a dedicated video pop-up window. Supermassive.com cannot control the quality or availablity of listed video items. MP3 audio enclosures from podcasts will appear as a download link; within a single-track flash audio player; or as a list of songs in a flash multi-audio player, if multiple enclosures are included with the feed. A list of keywords related to each feed's top 15 headlines will also be included in the reader, linking back to Supermassive's multi-search reader. Visible RSS icons with links to source feeds will be included on each relevant topic page.

Feeds syndicated on Supermassive will have recent items (usually within one to three hours) appear on topic home pages, and up to 15 past items (usually within 1 to 3 days) available on dedicated RSS pages. Supermassive will cache RSS feeds for up to an hour at a time, but does not cache image, audio, or video files, and does not store or index any syndicated media. RSS feeds are requested hourly or semi-hourly with a HTTP conditional get, and will not pull entire feeds unless there are new entries since the last update. All HTML tags will be stripped from text descriptions, including share links, embedded advertisements, and tracking images. All text descriptions will be truncated to under 250 characters. Click-through links to source domains are provided for all embedded media items. If you are the owner of a feed listed on our site, and feel that these syndication terms violate your feed's terms of service, please e-mail us at feeds@supermassive.com with your feed link and we will promptly delete your feed.

RSS Search and Tagging

The Supermassive search feature pulls current news and video items from Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, and VideoSurf RSS search services. Supermassive has no control over the relevancy or appropriateness of the items that are returned via this feature. Please search at your own risk. Topic tagging and page tagging provided by Yahoo's Term Extraction API.

RSS Re-syndication

At the present time, Supermassive does not re-syndicate RSS feeds. Supermassive syndicates RSS headlines for temporary HTML display on news topic pages only.