RSS Reaches Out for New Networks

loid_void writes "The software and services used to read XML-based news feeds are continuing to branch out as the syndication method gains popularity on the Web." From the article: "More and more companies are starting to use internal content distributed in the form of RSS...Having this content delivered internally in a secure manner is really kind of the sweet spot for [enterprises] right now."

Secure? RSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing inherently secure about RSS vs. any other format.

dates!

[odyrithm]

I was just working on a simple php script to pull rss feeds but found most sites only give title, link and description details for the items... why no date? seems nuts. /. does provide a date however, the loverly people.

Re:Secure? RSS?

[odyrithm]

I'm pretty sure thats the point.. anyone can access the feeds - there just a web page like any else just xml instead of html.

All sorts of crasy stuff

[zkn]

People are also starting to podcast all sorts of crasy stuff, like videos. Making vLogPodcasts. (And screwing up my playlists with videofiles).

RSS is just another great way of distributing news. Expecially podcasting it with simple programs you just keep running so then down anything new when it arives.

Internally in companies I can see the usage as a "message of the day" sort of thing where anything everyone needs to se is posted. Instead of cluttering up peoples inboxes it's all gathered a centrel spot and people can update by browsing the RSS feed.

Re:Buzzword Bingo

[pohl]

There are things that RSS is NOT good for. Like, sending and receiving email or most forms of office communications.

I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your analysis, there, Flexible.

The point here is not that RSS should be used for sending and receiving email. Rather, the point is that email leads to lots of problems in office communications...too much valuable knowledge ends up scattered in various inboxes, unavailable to the organization as a whole. Or even worse than that, you end up with a bajillion revisions of miscellaneous documents flying around as attachments.

A much better idea would be to deprecate email as it is currently used, and actually capture intra-office communication in some issue-tracking system, wiki, or other appropriate system.

Where I work we started doing this with JIRA [atlassian.com] and Confluence [atlassian.com], both of which offer RSS feeds so that you can stay up-to-date on the changes within those systems. The combination is powerful, and I recommend it without hesitation.

Re:Buzzword Bingo

[pohl]

The lightbulb didn't come one for me until I tried a really nice RSS reader. It's provides a way to skim large amounts of information looking for nuggets in a very small amount of time. (In my case, it was NetNewsWire [ranchero.com]). In my opinion the RSS phenomenon is an example of information-consumers re-routing around bogosity, such as poorly designed sites and intrusive advertisements. You could either take control over how you consume information, or you can be a gullet with an upwardly-open maw at the end of a conveyor. Your choice.

Buzzword Bingo-Selfcontrol.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You could either take control over how you consume information, or you can be a gullet with an upwardly-open maw at the end of a conveyor. "

Considering RSS fits into the same part of the "transportation" equation as HTML. The above isn't saying that much. Control is what you make it out to be.

"In my opinion the RSS phenomenon is an example of information-consumers re-routing around bogosity, such as poorly designed sites and intrusive advertisements."

As long as one end of that pipe is controlled by someone else. The extent of your freedom will not be entirly in your hands.

Re:Hey, then we could create a server

[Jeffrey Baker]

Those who do not understand Usenet are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.

RSS is irrepairably broken, as is any other polling distribution system.

No one ever pays attention

[kiwidefunkt]

Didn't we just read about how PR begets bullshit news stories [paulgraham.com]? Case in point: TFA. Really, there's nothing but crap in that article. Taking a step back, it looks like it has a lot to do with Rojo's launch and a bit to do with NewsGator. Of course, we all know the best aggregator is going to be Gmail...once it trickles down. For now, Bloglines [bloglines.com] will suffice. And no, reading/subscribing to hundreds of feeds does not take more time than actually visiting all the sites. What the hell?

Re:Hey, then we could create a server

[Colin Smith]

The irony is that someone's going to splat an news server onto another port, start dumping RSS feeds into a group heirarchy and charge muppets a fortune for it. I can just see it now.