Response to Class Article

In response to the article posted on the class website, RSS Feeds Can Build Web Traffic, but Fence Sitters Note Problems, I was left with three thoughts regarding the arguments used by the fence sitters to highlight potential problems RSS feeds can create.

Although I realize that advertisements help fund the content we receive on the Internet, television, and radio, I welcome the notion of an environment where the side of my computer screen isn’t blinking and 50 pop up ads aren’t jumping out onto the middle of my desktop simultaneously. I truthfully cannot recall the last Internet ad that I saw, even though I am regularly exposed 100s per day. Therefore, after writing off Internet advertising as burdensome and non-effective, it urks me that it now stands in the way of a technology advancement that could serve to benefit many people.

In regards to the second argument, that RSS feeds offer another opening for content aggregators, I again do not view this as a negative thing. While I refuse to pick up a physical newspaper and read the actual articles, I will read the headlines and short summaries that get e-mailed to me via the New York Times. Why read 1000 words when you can grasp 80% of the meaning from 20 words? If I could also view the Detroit weather forecast and get an update about what I missed on my favorite television show within the same window, it would save both time and energy.

Finally, the argument that RSS will confuse mainstream users because it lacks standardization and is still emerging from an early adopter phase, is more of a fact than an argument. Yes, these feeds are in an early adopter phase, but so too were telephones, televisions, cell phone, computers, and websites once upon a time. The mainstream public may not currently have a crystal clear understanding of these feeds, but based on the past history of other technical innovations being successfully integrated into our lives, I have the utmost confidence that once the public learns of the benefits RSS offers, they will want to be a part of this emerging trend.

Comments

[F. Andy Seidl]

There are numerous sources of RSS weather info (Google knows where they are). Here's one from NOAA's National Weather Service:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/data/current_obs/KARB.rss

Here's the same feed syndicated into my personal website:
http://myst-technology.com/mysmartchannels/public/aggregate/55938?model=user/faseidl/web

You can create custom weather feeds for any region here:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/data/current_obs/