if a unique item identifier 70 has been embedded in the feed item 64 the unique item identifier 70 is identified with the corresponding feed item 64 as the unique item identifier 70 at step 134 continuing in fig7 if there is no unique item identifier 70 then the next step 136 is to determine whether the feed item 64 has a link xml element 80 generally speaking the link 80 is the xml tag for a url of the feed item 64 being syndicated if the feed item 64 has a link xml element 80 at step 138 the link element 80 will be hashed the result of which is the assignment of the unique item identifier 70 of the feed item 64 while there are varying ways to hash an item a commonly understood method for hashing includes taking the feed item 64 and applying a publicly understood u201c secure hash algorithm u201d to obtain a fixed length message digest this digest is then base64 encoded a common content transfer encoding method to make it suitable for storing in a text based field this act results in a u201c hashcode u201d that will be a unique item for the source item if the feed item 64 has no link xml element 80 at step 140 in fig7 it will then be determined if the feed item 64 has a summary xml element 86 a summary xml element 86 is commonly understood to mean a u201c short summary of the item being syndicated u201d if it is determined at step 140 that the feed item 64 has a summary xml element 86 it will be hashed at step 142 the result of which is the.