FeedCycle has introduced a new web service that manages cyclic web feeds – feeds that let subscribers receive, on a scheduled basis, sequential episodes from within a series of episodes.

For example, if you have a 10 part training course in a cyclid web feed, on day 1 you would receive the first topic, on day 2 you would receive the second topic, and on day 10 the cycle would be complete.

The site suggests a variety of uses for cyclic web feeds:

• Podcasts – deliver series of podcasts to “replay” in a specific order
• Tip-a-day information feeds
• Audio book publishing
• Delivering training

A free service plan is available that is limited to 30 stages per feed cycle. Paid plans offer additional services, including longer feed cycles, higher limits on number of items per feed cycle, hosting with custom domain names and password-protected and encrypted feeds.

FeedCycle delivers standard RSS feeds, and conventional RSS tools can be used to subscribe to these feeds.

Technical features

• Create valid RSS feeds in RSS 2.0 format
• Supports enhanced CDATA content
• Audio and video podcasting (via automatically generated RSS enclosures)
• PDF enclosures
• Full and partial RSS entries (items)
• Use your own domain name via CNAME DNS
• Supports UTF-8 character set (including Arabic, Japanese etc.)
• Password protect your feeds (uses basic HTTP authentication)
• Secure feeds via SSL (encryption) (not with your own domain name)

All files – audio, video and images – remain on your own website.

Supported file / MIME types for audio and video podcasting

If you create a link to web URL containing one of these file extensions (within the full content section on an item) an enclosure with the following MIME type will be created:

• .mp3 -> mpeg/audio
• .m4a -> audio/x-m4a
• .mp4 -> video/mp4
• .m4v -> video/x-m4v
• .mov -> video/quicktime
• .wmv -> video/x-ms-wmv
• pdf -> application/pdf

Source: FeedCycle