If you have a FeedBurner account, you can use the new Publicize/SpringWidgets service to publish your feed in a Flash-based RSS/Atom Reader. This gives you the ability to drop an embed tag into any HTML page or as a widget in social sites like MySpace.

As an experiment I put one on markwoodman.com, and I like the results. Here’s a screenshot of a smaller version:

This example has small dimensions, but you can specify any length/width you like. (The one on markwoodman.com is much wider.) If you would like to play with the SpringWidget interface, you can use my widget as an example.

The widget skin provided through FeedBurner only gives partial text of each item, but in a widget environment, that makes sense. Clicking on an item will take you to the corresponding page, or you can click on the embedded RSS icon to take you to the FeedBurner feed. Good stuff.

The Associated Press ran a piece on RSS yesterday that got a thumbs-up from Steve Rubel, but I wondered how many outlets would use it:

Column: What are online RSS feeds?

A buddy of mine reminded me of it this morning, so I did a bit of poking around to see how much it had been syndicated across outlets in the last 24 hours.

According to a Google News search, the piece has run in about 40 different outlets as of this morning. Not bad, not bad at all. It will be interesting to look back at growth rates of RSS/Atom readers and see how (if) this piece affected the curve.

If you’re a Yahoo user, you can rate/recommend the article on Yahoo to help it get higher visibility.

So I was gazing into the eyes of my infant this morning, pondering life and what it all means. His bright blue eyes were communicating something I had never considered.

It was if he was saying, “Dear father: Isn’t there an RSS feed for those of us who are breastfeeding? Tips on getting the most out of your meal — that sort of thing?”

He’s right. There has to be something. And something there is:

Breastfeeding Daily Tip [sic] and News
http://www.babylovesyourmilk.com/breast-feeding/rss.xml

If the Chumby folks will let me have a prototype, I could to hook up a crib reader for my son in no time. In the meantime, I guess his mom will have to pass along the tips to him.

Er, no pun intended.

There are several media outlets offering RSS feeds of election results for today:

• New York Times - Election Results RSS
  
• Washington Post - Election Results RSS
• CBS News - Top Stories in Politics RSS
  
• Fox News - Top Stories in Politics RSS
  

U.S. citizens are voting today in the mid-term elections. (Don’t forget to vote.) If the current furor over elections is any indication, the 2008 Presidential elections should be quite a show.
If you’ve ever wanted to run for a political office but just don’t have the time, here’s a great way to prove to your friends constituents you would make a great President of the United States:

eLECTIONS

eELECTIONS is a one- or two-player Flash game in 3D board game format that looks and feels like the Game of Life. But… with less kids, and more skeletons in your closet.

Sponsored in part by the History Channel, it also offers quite a bit of educational material about how the presidential election process works.

Click the image for a full-size screenshot:

Good luck with those skeletons.