RSS Opportunities
We all like to keep up with the news that interests us, and the Internet has opened the door to amazing numbers of specialized news sources, all at the click of a mouse. It is not uncommon for people to visit ten or more of their favorite sites several times a day. The problem is, that takes time.
A technology called RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is fast changing that problem by opening the door to a new and powerful way to quickly collect targeted information from a wide variety of sources.
Netscape originally developed the RSS technology as a tool for building portals containing headlines and links to mainstream news sites. For example, if you want to build a Web page that contains headlines from multiple sources, such as USA Today, The New York Times, CNN.com,and a host of others, RSS is a very good way of doing it.
Creatively Applying Technology
RSS was originally designed for distributing headlines, short text excerpts, and links to Web pages. As with any new technology, people look at the intended use and ask: What else can I do with it? In this case, RSS quickly became a new and powerful way to distribute any Web content that can be broken into pieces and distributed via the Internet.
To get started, first you subscribe to a feed on your favorite site and its headlines are automatically downloaded to an RSS reader on your computer desktop. All you have to do is select the specific information you would like to receive from any number of Web sites and have it delivered automatically to your computer desktop whenever you are online.
In addition to news, you may want to track several auctions on eBay, and a UPS shipment. By setting up an RSS feed on your computer desktop, you can have all of this and more sent directly to your desktop.
A quick way to see how this works is to go to My Yahoo!, a personalized service that is free to any registered user of Yahoo!
To set up your own customized RSS feed, click on the “add Content” link on the main page of My Yahoo! You can use the feeds Yahoo has already set up for you, or you can customize your own.
Multimedia RSS
Given the wide use of bandwidth, it won’t be long and we will see RSS used as a vehicle to distribute large multimedia files. For example, you may subscribe to a multimedia RSS feed that sends you the file over a period of hours, depending on the size of the file, while you are working on another project. When it is finished downloading, you will be notified and can view the file.
Ask yourself: How could I use RSS to cut the time I spend searching for news on the topics I want to know about on a regular basis? How could our company use RSS to keep up with the latest information from our industry? Could our company use RSS to keep our customers abreast of new products or services?
Daniel Burrus, one of the world's leading technology forecasters, business strategists, and author of six books
Copyright 2005 Author retains copyright. All Rights Reserved.
