Tag: RSS

Food for Thought, Technology

The saddest RSS feed ever

The Department of Defense News Releases feed allows technology to present a view of the the Iraq War that news does not. This feed contains the public press releases of the names of the casulties in Iraq and Afghanistan. I for one find this feed to be filled with nothing but loss and sorrow. I consume a fair number of RSS feeds and this is one feed that makes all others trivial.

If you are anti-war here is a feed of information that only motivates one to fight for an end even harder.

If you are supportive of the Iraq war you should subscribe to this feed to ensure that you have a clear understanding of the impacts of your support.

A feed that pains my heart to read.

Technology, tomcarroll.org

Welcome FeedBurner

I have finally closed on my RFP for feed management. It only took me 10 months, that’s about right for an IT project. I have to say the set up was easy and straight forward.

I look forward to the day when Google analytics is merged with FeedBurner. Google will soon have a comprehensive offering for collecting behavioral data for websites. A belated congratulations to the folks at FeedBurner, I hope that the acquisition goes better than others (blogger, dodgeball).

General

Update: My Feed management services RFP

FeedBurner wins hands down.

It looks like no other feed management service has the stones to take them on. The FeedBurner reply was the only response I received. I saw traffic from multiple companies that offer Feed management services but none replied to my RFP. I will not mention any names of the lurking companies since they didn’t want to reply.

So In the coming weeks I will be migrating my feeds over to FeedBurner. I am happy to be moving my business to a Chicago based company. FeedBurner did meet most of my requirements though I prefer to use Google analytics for my web traffic analysis. Mint looks cool I will have to do an RFP for Analytics.

I will provide a more detailed post on FeedBurner later.

Technology, tomcarroll.org

Update on my RFP for Feed Management Services

Well, I put out my RFP for feed management services last Thursday. I have received one thoughtful and rapid reply from FeedBurner (a Chicago company, that makes me happy). I have received visitors from some other companies that offer feed management services (You know who you are) but none as of this post have responded. So I will leave my RFP open until the end of the week.

On Friday August 11, I will make my decision and publish my findings.

So, if any of you lurking companies wish to take on FeedBurner, you better get to it.

Links:
reply from FeedBurner

Technology

RSS Enterprise

I was reading James Governor’s post commenting on Moonwatcher Charlie Wood’s post “RSS is Velcro for Enterprise Applications”. James points out that Atom might be a better choice because:

[Atom]is more loosely coupled because it contains greater semantic richness.

I think from a technical perspective James makes a great point. The use of a semantically rich syndication stream, creates a world of opportunity for a whole new breed of enterprise applications.

But….. The challenge I see is that just mentioning RSS, Semantic, Atom and Loosely coupled would cause many technology leaders heads to explode. The reality is that these technologies, ideas and techniques are not well (or for that matter widely) understood, and that lack of understanding severely limits their adoption in the enterprise. I also see that enterprise software vendors are slow to generally adopt RSS/Atom and rich semantic notation because they are too busy trying to meet the customers other demands.

This ship will leave space dock, I’m just not sure when.

Links:
Charlie Wood’s RSS Feed
RSS is Velcro for Enterprise Applications
Charlie Wood’s Introduction to RSS

James Governor’s RSS Feed
RSS Spans Apps with Velcro Hooks

Food for Thought, Technology

Open letter to those without RSS feeds

To whom it may concern,

I will not join your mailing list.

If your company, service or group requires me to get information via a mailing list, forget about it. If you enroll me I will unsubscribe, I will not enroll, and I will do everything in my power to avoid using your product. PLEASE CREATE AN RSS FEED. An organization that I belong to offered events calendar updates via email. I will most likely suggest using an RSS feed, I will offer my assistance and then unsubscribe.

I know a great many people don’t know what RSS is, so I hope my little protest and offer of help (for those things I believe in) will encourage companies to find out about RSS. I then hope this new found understanding of RSS will result in an RSS option. The information flow that I sustain via RSS aggregation, filtering and classifying is far more efficient than email.

So please give me a break, wake-up and read the writing in my RSS feed.

Links:
Wikipedia on RSS

Technology

Google personalized homepage with Google Reader is great!

I have kept my reading list in Google reader from the day it was announced at Web 2.0 in October. I have to say the product has come a long way. I would keep my list in Reader and then export to OPML and then import the OPML into thunderbird. Well that practice has come to an end. I just started using the Reader integration with Google’s personalized homepage and I love it.

Google Reader Feature Request:
I would like a way to create rule based filters.

tomcarroll.org

RSS feed Fixed

I have received some complaints (Angry Penguin) about my RSS feed only sending article summaries. I just want to clarify that I wasn’t trying to force people to the site, it was just an oversight on my part. It was a simple config change in wordpress. I hope the new config makes your subscription a bit more enjoyable.

blogging, tomcarroll.org

A point of order: Linking within posts

I will no longer link within my writing instead I will provide links at the bottom of the post just above the tags. I was listening to the Gillmor Gang[1] and Steve Gillmor talked about linking being dead[2]. From a value perspective linking is challenged due to all the splinks. Companies that sell words within their articles, and spammers really are killing the informational value of linking. So in effort to make my text easier to consume, I am refraining from linking from within the post. Posts will have a links section at the bottom and eventually I will provide an icon that identifies off site links. I will also be offering the RSS feeds for sites I reference in an effort to drive folks away from a page click page model.

Links:
Get the Gillmor Gang RSS here
[1] The Gillmor Gang Podcast

Get Steve Gillmor’s InfoRouter RSS here
[2] Links are dead, Doc: by Steve Gillmor