rss

RSS

An Emerging Method of Internet-Based Communication

RSS: Introduction

• What does the acronym RSS stand for?– RDF (Resource Description Framework) Site

Summary– Rich Site Summary– Really Simple Syndication

• Who’s in charge of making up Internet acronyms? Probably not a TCO.

RSS: Introduction

• My primary message in that I believe there is an emerging technology--RSS--that may evolve into a significant and widely-used means of personal, commercial, and public communication. As such, it is a technology with which technical communicators should be familiar.

RSS: Review of Email and the Web

• Format and presentation– Email: text (typically); simplified HTML– Web: HTML (typically quite “rich”)


• Delivery initiation– Email: individual requests, subscriptions (e.g.,

newsletters)– Web: arbitrary browsing, search (e.g., Google)


• Delivery control– Email: “push”– Web: “pull” (MS “Push Technology”

apparently flopped)


• Content specification– Email: all-or-none– Web: “paging” (all-or-none within a page)


• Content structure– Email: totally unstructured– Web: HTML provides for some structure but

focused on (and entangled with) presentation


• Bandwidth management– Email: none (all-or-none)– Web: none (all-or-none)


• RSS offers improvements over email and the web—adopting the best of each, and avoiding the worst of each

RSS: Products

• RSS readers– Pluck by Pluck Corporation– FeedDemon by Bradbury Software

• RSS creators– FeedForAll by NotePage

http://www.pluck.com/

http://www.bradsoft.com/

http://www.notepage.com/

RSS: Advantages over Email and Web

• Delivery control– Initiated, controlled, and specified by the

recipient, not the sender or author


• Bandwidth management– Extremely efficient– No unsolicited traffic– Solicited traffic starts with “headlines” and

“descriptions”


• Content structure– XML-based– Structured “enough” to be used by both

humans and computers


• Format and presentation– RSS specification provides for improved

search, filtering, scanning, and “drill-down”– Makes best use of plain text, simplified HTML,

and rich HTML


• Extra: opens business opportunities for “aggregators”

• Extra: “emergent” properties resulting from various combinations of feed subscriptions and “watches”

RSS: Speculation

• More web sites, including non-news sites, will “syndicate” content using RSS

• RSS will be built into popular email packages (P.S.—numerous add-ins available now for Outlook)

• RSS will be built into (or “plugged into”) web browsers (P.S.—IE 7 will have it)

• RSS will rise to a level of usefulness close to that of email and the web

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