• by Shankar Gupta , December 5, 2005

Web-based news aggregator and search engine Inform today is expected to announce the addition of video and audio content, along with customizable RSS feeds, for users--who can build news feeds from Inform's various news categories and searches--as well as publishers, who can build dynamic RSS items to publish on their Web sites.

Inform Project Manager Julian Steinberg said the company included video because of popular demand from users. "People really wanted video," he said. "In the future, reading news online--especially with the explosion of broadband, etc.--people are really going to want to be able to access video as well."

In addition to video and audio files--two hot commodities in online news and media--Inform's new release also includes RSS support, which allows users to export searches and categories to any third-party RSS reader, be it Web-based or software. The RSS feeds may also include audio files culled from Inform's publisher partners, making them technically podcasts, and can also include video feeds. Moreover, publishers can create "news widgets," which can dynamically display their own pages' content by being constantly updated via RSS feeds.

Steinberg said that the RSS "news widgets" are part of a B2B play, which is more customizable for Inform clients than just the basic widget. This is showcasing some of our B2B capability," he said. "Anyone who has an online property could use it. It could be as simple as just showing other related stories within their own properties."