RSS seems to be on the tip of every tongue nowadays, and I’ve been realizing not everybody has a clear idea of “what” it is, or how it differs from Atom (that “other feed type”). This post hopefully clears up the mess in everybody’s mind about the differences between RSS and Atom and is loosely based on the comparison chart here and Atom 1.0’s specification, dated July 12.

Okay, so what are these things?

Both RSS and Atom present a webmaster with ways to give users access to his content without making the user load up their webpage. While this is a very loose scope, many other uses arise from this simple activity - examples: it becomes possible to have headlines from other websites in your own, to aggregate news with an application so you can catch up on them later, to follow what a load of websites are talking about with one swoop, etc. Basically, the reason for all the hype is that possibilities are in fact, endless (well, you know. Almost endless).

Anyway, i’ll be bold enough to assume you have a clear idea of what RSS and/or Atom is and the last paragraph was boring enough to skip. Let’s get on to what was promised. A comparison between the two, because that seems to be important: (more…)

I had ignored this post earlier today but now that I was getting everything from today wrapped up and was reading some final newsbits to get offline and do some late work, I went back to my newsreader and stumbled upon it again.

I guess a video speaks louder than anything I might write, so check out the video Nat did with his kids, and follow the (inflamatory yet interesting) discussion about it up at the O’reilly Radar. I don’t really know what to make of it. Brilliant, for sure. Beware, though: Nat warns, and I quote: contains foul language and political thought.

Every once in a while, I feel some people give a damn. In my previous posts about free culture, I’ve mentioned how I admire the work of people like Lawrence Lessig who defend a world where you are given freedoms and not the other way around.

Yesterday when I was checking some links, I ran across Eric Von Hippel’s new book “Democratizing Innovation“, released under a Creative Commons license. Eric Von Hippel is the director of innovation at the MIT, so he definitely knows both what he’s talking about and why he chose to release his book for free.

This being said, the book is amazing. I started reading it yesterday while waiting for my order to arrive from Amazon, and to give you a taste of what it is about and why you should be reading it, I quote its first paragraph:

When I say that innovation is being democratized, I mean that users of products and services—both firms and individual consumers—are increasingly able to innovate for themselves. User-centered innovation processes offer great advantages over the manufacturer-centric innovation development systems that have been the mainstay of commerce for hundreds of years. Users that innovate can develop exactly what they want, rather than relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very imperfect) agents. Moreover, individual users do not have to develop everything they need on their own: they can benefit from innovations developed and freely shared by others.

People who are into the evolution of markets, technology and innovation should get a hold of this book. Either through amazon, online, or both, as I did - remember to support the author by actually buying the book if you like it. Highly recommended.

While some people are already in the age of “subscription”, others are clearly not. Notice the image on the right. You’ve seen these boxes everywhere, particularly on news websites. These utilitary boxes give you the possibility of printing and emailing some piece of content (usually news items - here’s a news story at the economist that serves as an example). Now, what’s wrong with this picture? Clearly, not thinking about the user.

Why this is wrong

First, nobody cares about these boxes. When you want to print some content off of a news piece, you usually do try and find them, but that’s the only case. Do you ever use the “Email this” link? My best bet is on a round “no”, because you might as well grab the URL and send that instead, right? So what does this make of that box? A useless fixture floated on a news piece, that nobody gives a damn about.

Now, in this case in particular, the Economist (that again serves as an example amidst many many other websites with the same problem) has added an “RSS feeds” link. How does that help anyone who reads the Economist online? I mean, the few people who know what an RSS feed is do “get it”, but for everybody else (95% of the readers of the economist) that means “computer gibberish”.

Embrace the subscription

What *is* an RSS feed? Nothing but a means to subscribe to your content. Embrace that. Cut the “RSS Feed” link and change that to “Subscribe”. Add a link to a page where it explains what a feed is, how to read subscribed content, what good applications are out there on the market in order to read that content.

Take that link from your useless box-of-all-trades and get it somewhere where people will actually look. Advertise your subscribed content. Make it news-worthy - now all your readers can get your content even without opening a browser window! It is a shame that people realize the technology exists, but don’t put it to real use. A few changes on webpages mean a whole lot for both you, your users, and the web as a whole.

And remember that publishing RSS feeds doesn’t mean lack of revenue, just because people won’t be looking at your ads on webpages. There’s other obvious ways to profit from RSS feeds if you’re a publisher, but that’s another post right there. Now start changing those damn webpages.