I'm hooked on Really Simple Syndication (RSS), but it hasn't always been this way. Over the last year or so, while we slowly built a list of RSS feeds for the PCMag.com Web site, I continually scratched my head and wondered, "What's the point?"
RSS technology is a result of the growth of XML and its ease of use. It allows Webmasters to produce XML news feeds for their sites easily. Those who run reader software can subscribe to and read the feeds. I understood how RSS worked. What I didn't get was who would see the feeds, why they would read them, and what they would do with the links.
I was having a hard time separating my feeling about RSS from the bad memories I still have from the Web's first dance with push technology, PointCast. Depending on whom you asked, PointCast was an Internet-based environment that was designed either to augment or supplant the Web. I still don't know which is correct (Microsoft didn't either, so it added channels to Internet Explorer to end the confusion). Using PointCast, companies like CNN and Disney would deliver multimedia-rich stories (and PointCast would deliver equally fat ads) via dial-up connection to heavy and slow interfaces. There's no gentle way to say this: The entire system sucked wind. It was incredibly slow, rigid, and could bring any computer to a virtual halt. Thank goodness it failed.
So I had to wonder how RSS would be different. Coworkers usually answered my snide comments with, "Download a reader and try it out. It's easy." "Right," I grumbled. "Everything online is easy. Come on, guys, I work in this industry. Nothing is ever easy or works consistently for any length of time." My reasoning seemed perfect—except for one small thing. RSS, it turns out, is the exception.
I reached this conclusion shortly after I downloaded a pair of readers—RSSReader (recommended by John C. Dvorak, my friend and fellow PC Magazine columnist) and FeedDemon (recommended by Ziff Davis Internet Editor-in-Chief Jim Louderback). Both are strong utilities. RSSReader is in beta and is free for downloading, and Bradbury Software offers a trial version of FeedDemon.
I installed and ran both, but after spending an afternoon noodling around with them, I ended up favoring RSSReader. The interface is simple, and I soon realized that adding feeds is as easy as cutting and pasting. (One caveat: This beta is a bit of a resource hog. I found it was the top memory consumer when I checked Task Manager's Processes tab.)
Have you seen the orange box with the letters "XML" popping up all over the Web? It's an indicator than an XML feed is available, but there's almost never information about what to do with it. When you click on it, a full-page of XML usually loads into your browser. That's not what people need for their readers. If you right-click on the orange box instead, you can copy the shortcut, a very simple URL that can be pasted into one of the many RSS readers. Using RSSReader, all you have to do is select "Add New Channel" (some push terms never die) and then paste in the link you've copied. RSSReader then prompts you to put the channel in a group or create a new one. That's it. The reader's right-hand pane in instantly fills with recent headlines and synopses of the stories from that channel. RSSReader allows me to click and jump to the associated Web page in my browser or browse the page within the reader. Often I'll do neither and just digest all the headlines and abstracts.
I find this an efficient method of content browsing because I don't have to do anything to collect the new headlines. They come in as sites publish stories, depending on how often those sites publish their RSS feeds, and I can do my viewing in the reader as I wish. RSSReader also lets me filter the headlines by keyword or by time, so that I can group them by the last 30 minutes or from as far back as the last four days. The reader can also pop up recent headlines in my task tray. It's a great way to find out about breaking news.
The key difference between past push channels and today's RSS feeds is that feeds are more specific than channels ever were. Web sites, such as PCMag.com, create XML feeds for topics as broad as reviews and as narrow as digital cameras. Such granularity gives users greater variety and choices, and it lets them group content types together. (It also tends to cut down on headline overload—there will be far fewer digital-camera headlines than review headlines from PCMag.com.) So, for example, I can grab all my competitors' tech news feeds and put them in one folder called "Competitive News."
Author: Lance Ulanoff
Previous article: 13 November 2006
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