Pinch me hard, because I must be dreaming.
I finally understand what the hell 'RSS' is.
For months now, everyone has been talking about RSS technology. It's going to change the Internet. It's going to change newsletters. It's going to render push e-mail newsletters obsolete, in fact. Or so everyone says.
Which is all fine and good, but for the longest time, I just could not understand what RSS is. Yes, I understand that it can stand for Really Simple Syndication. Yes, I understand that it can somehow deliver the news you want right to your desktop.
But every time I tried to use it, it never worked. I would hit the 'RSS Feed' on someone's blog and get a page of gibberish. I tried to download an 'aggregator' or 'reader' or whatever it is you're supposed to need to do this, and couldn't do it.
And every time I read an article about it, I was even more confused.
I must have pestered my good pal Shel Holtz 10 times in the past year, asking him to explain it to me. But because it was always via e-mail, or over the phone, he had to do it without showing me how it works. And because I'm a technological idiot, I never got it.
Then, one glorious day last week, I got it. And why? Because someone was able to show it to me.
I was doing some work out at McDonalds, and the techie guru out there, Brian Kramer, and I were talking about future trends. 'Do you get this RSS?' I asked him.
Stupid question. Brian is real smart. Within minutes, he had given me a simple tutorial that made everything perfectly clear.
And if you're still confused by the concept, there's a real simple way to figure it out.
Go to www.yahoo.com. Sign up for MyYahoo, which will give you an e-mail address and a home page that you can customize with anything you want.
When you do that, you automatically get an RSS reader, which is built into your MyYahoo page. No downloads, no new software, no nothing.
Then, all you have to do is go around to all the blogs and web sites you read on a regular basis, and if they offer an RSS feed, get the link and paste it into your MyYahoo page. (It's really that simple).
Then, instead of surfing the intranet, you can just go to your MyYahoo page, and everything you want is right there. You can even set your reader to give you just headlines, or a headline and summary. You can set your reader to get updates every day, every hour, every week, or whenever you want.
It's so cool! And MyYahoo has so much content already. Just by clicking on links, you can add RSS feeds from technology publications, travel publications WINE publications . . . they've got hundreds of RSS feeds you can add to your page.
So basically, my MyYahoo page is my own personal newsletter, with headlines and summaries of stories. The first story is by Shel Holtz, the second is about wine, the third is about the Cubs, the fourth is my pal Pete Shinbach's blog, The Bach Door. And so on.
Now, I'm sure there are probably a lot of techies snickering out there right now. 'Hey,' they're e-mailing each other, 'Ding Dong finally figured out RSS . . . about six months behind the rest of the profession.'
Well, I'm not ashamed of myself. At least I kept trying until I got it. Thanks, Brian.
Comments (18)
You know, I never "got" RSS either. Now I do (thanks Steve!) and I'm sure I'll spend some time playing around and adding RSS feeds to my Yahoo page. In fact, after about 10 minutes of doing this, I can't understand why any blog would NOT offer an RSS feed. What a great way to make sure that your readers stay regular readers.
Posted by Andrea | May 11, 2005 12:57 PM
Posted on May 11, 2005 12:57
I'd really appreciate your explaining it! What we wanted to do was to do an RSS feed from our companywide intranet and set the bar for our local intranets. So that an employee who's interested to keep on top of the companywide messages plus the local info from one spot.
Posted by Judy | May 12, 2005 10:34 AM
Posted on May 12, 2005 10:34
Judy!!!!
Yes!!!! That's how I see it being used to!! Or one way, anyway. That could be some powerful stuff . . . if the internal IT people can swing it, that is.
Oh, Rebecca . . . please help us poor communicators. We need your wonderful IT guidance.
Hurray for IT People!!!! Hurrray!!!!
Steve C.
Posted by Steve C. | May 12, 2005 11:13 AM
Posted on May 12, 2005 11:13
Ding dongs unite.
Steve - I printed out your instructions, followed them to the letter and am still getting jibberish when I click on RSS. There's a reason I got As in English and Ds in Math and Science. I can write a poem about my technological woes, but I still can't figure out how to retrieve my phone messages from my land line at home.
It's hopeless. I am my mother's daughter (she just got a microwave a few years ago).
Sheesh!
Posted by Eileen | May 12, 2005 11:40 AM
Posted on May 12, 2005 11:40
Shoot!!! Eileen: this may be my fault. I may have left out one key step. Okay, so you're at, say, Shel Holtz's site. You click on the rss thing. And you get gibberish.
Then you go up to the address bar, and copy THAT link, whatever that address is. And THAT is what you put into myyahoo. I should have said that part. Sorry.
There is also a way to hit one of the links that is in that page of gibberish to do the same thing . . . but it's easier to just go cut and paste that address.
Steve
Posted by Steve C. | May 12, 2005 12:00 PM
Posted on May 12, 2005 12:00
Woo hoo! Am beaming with pride that I have successfully entered the world of RSS.
Now what? Do I just check MY YAHOO every so often, or does it alert me when someone has posted?
Fear I have just uploaded technology I don't understand. Anxiety creeping in ... head so fuzzy.
Will give it a try, but am loving this tech help. Good Lord, Rebecca, where are you?
Posted by Eileen | May 12, 2005 12:11 PM
Posted on May 12, 2005 12:11
DATE: 05/11/2005 11:24:7P AM
I'll admit to being behind the curve on this one. But in the interest of catching up:
"15 things you can do with RSS (it was supposed to be 10, but I got carried away)"
http://timyang.com/comments.php?id=630_0_1_0_C
Posted by Steve Neruda | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 02:33:0P PM
Hey, Ding Dong finally figured out RSS! :)
Posted by Darin | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 02:72:9P PM
We use RSS Bandit here. It's easy and it gives me a cute little smiley with an eyepatch in my systray. It's the way I keep up on my important things, like Steve's blog, Dilbert and a few techie things peppered in here and there.
I'm not emailing anyone and making fun of you. Blogging is just now starting to become mainstream, so it's reasonable to assume that a lot of people aren't using RSS in every day practice.
Also - I'm a very visual learner. And after years and years of doing tech support, I've come to learn that sometimes you have to see something to know what a person is talking about. i.e. A user calls me and says, "The printer is broken" ...so I go over and look at the printer. Print a test page from my system, verify that there's actually paper in the tray and tell the user that the printer is not broken.
"Yes, it's broken, I can't print to it."
Well, the user didn't say that, just because the user can't print to it doesn't make it broken.
Are you getting an error?
"Yes"
Well, the user didn't say that either, that could change things....and so on and so on.
Point being, sometimes you have to see someone do something to understand what they're doing! but I digress...
Way to stick with it Steve.
Posted by Rebecca, Julie's friend | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 12:91:8P PM
Hey, RebeccaJulie'sFriend:
While I now am on expert on how to USE RSS, from the user's perspective, how would I use it as an internal communicator? I mean, I know how I would use it, from a communications perpsective . . . but what about from the technology side. Would I have to buy whatever software would allow me to put RSS capabilities on the intranet and internal blogs, and then give all employees RSS readers?
I mean, this could solve quite a few problems . . . but how do you get all employees to have RSS readers?
Steve
Posted by Steve C. | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 18:13:0P PM
Steve, you read my mind. I was going to pose the same question. I'd like to be able to put news on the Intranet without alot of work , requirements documents , software releases and other things I hear my IT department describing.
Posted by Mark | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 20:04:4P PM
One of the issues we have is that we have a fair amount of "portal customization" (non-RSS variety) available, and a downright anemic rate of people taking advantage. Granted, this is cooler, and ostensibly that coolness will result in people using it, but I'm not sure I buy that argument.
RSS is, as I understand, a kind of self selecting customization. REALLY relevant to the individual user, since you pull the stuff YOU want from a much wider pool of possibilities (ie the 'intraweb thingy') , but history and evidence here suggests an uphill battle at best.
Which is not to say its not a battle worth fighting (or a tool worth providing) but not sure I buy the "if you build it they will come" argument on this one...
Posted by Steve Neruda | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 29:35:5P PM
I've already persued the RSS topic internally with our IT folks. You'd have thought that I shot someone's grandmother. There were a lot of strange looks, followed by hushed voices - as if I had to be treated very carefully. Then there was a lot of clearing of throats and talk about bandwidth. It's always all about bandwidth. Sigh.
Posted by Judy | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/11/2005 32:45:9P PM
OMG - I just typed a really long geeky response to this and promptly closed my browser before I added my comment.
I'll have to retype tomorrow as I am out the door right now.
I can see wear they might whisper about bandwidth, but seriously, if they already have an extranet, allowing the feed is no.big.deal. It's not like you're streaming audio/video for crap's sake, you're just providing a different method to link to your newsletter. No more bandwitdth than typing www.newsletter.com or whatever. Bunch a lame-o's.
More educated response tomorrow, I promise.
Damn, and I said some really good things in that other thing, too. Bummer.
Posted by Rebecca, Julie's friend | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/12/2005 12:00:9P PM
Not sure about MS Outlook, but I know in Mozilla Thunderbird (free, open source e-mail client), you can set up a folder and pull RSS feeds into there, so when you check your e-mail, you can also see the latest stories from the feeds you chose.
Our company was purchased by a European company, and we pull in their corporate-wide news from an RSS feed and display it on our company's local intranet home page.
RSS is a great tool. It needs to mature a bit for major acceptance and they need to continue to develop easier ways of presenting it on different platforms, but it's getting there.
If you remember the old "webrings" in the early days of the World Wide Web, which were links between sites with similar topics (like a Model T Owner's webring, etc.), RSS is like the cousin of that concept. Except now the user is in control of what information they want to see, not the publisher.
Half IT Geek, Half Communicator
It's Crescentastic!! (you can trademark that if you want, Steve.) :P
Posted by Darin | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/12/2005 12:35:3P PM
Bartender, get me a Crescentini.
Posted by Meredith | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 05/18/2005 02:62:9P PM
Take deep breaths, Eileen, it's going to be okay. I tried to get back last week to say really smart things, but I just didn't have the time. I don't know if anyone will see this last post!
I've never used Yahoo's RSS, so I'm not sure if it will automatically update. Knowing yahoo, there is probably a preference to set that will check your feeds every so often to see if there's anything new .
We use RSS Bandit here. It's free, and gives you a cute little smiley face with an eye-patch in your systray - he changes when there is new stuff to read and that's your alert. We pushed the RSS Bandit to our workstations with group policy and we even set up some default feeds for our peeps. I would have to know more about the network and the workstations involved to say definitively what the best course of action would be for a company that wanted to implement RSS on the desktop. So to answer your question, yes - everyone would need some sort of reader.
If anyone needs more help with RSS and would like to email me directly, feel free. I am more than happy to pass along my IT knowledge. I'll even send you screen shots so you know just what to do. Instructional guides are my thing.
rebecca.crum@gmail.com
As far as a company putting RSS feeds out there in the universe, again, I need more information. What is the platform the site is built on? It can be relatively easy to set up, and if you google "setting up an RSS feed" there are tons of geeks sharing their experiences on setting this up. It will increase the use of bandwidth, but you can ask your users to only set their feeds to check your site (and I think you can limit this programmically as well) every x number of minutes to reduce the number of hits. It's the equivalent of someone going to your website and then hitting refresh every x seconds...so I don't think the bandwidth issue should every stop anyone.
Again, if anyone has specific questions, they can always email me, this is a very difficult topic on which to speak broadly.
Google RSS Bandit and get the download, it's a great little program and easy to mass distribute.
Posted by Rebecca, Julie's friend | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31
DATE: 06/13/2005 02:25:6P PM
Thanks for explaining all this, but I use MyYahoo and I still don't quite understand where to paste the links. Perhaps it just takes me longer than the rest.
Posted by Konstantin | October 16, 2006 4:31 PM
Posted on October 16, 2006 16:31