learnandteachonline.com

I end up explaining RSS a lot at work. Why? Because I'm always wanting to add a feed to a page or an online publication, and the content owner or subject matter expert wants to understand what it is.

The easiest way I know to explain RSS is to demo it. I've been doing it in Bloglines, and I've also done a screencast demo for users using Bloglines.

But I'm starting to wonder if I ought to get NewsGator's Outlook add-on. People feel so comfortable with Outlook at my workplace that I'm wondering if it would make RSS easier for me to explain and for my victims to accept. The only problem is that I would have to lure them into my office to see it. I've often done the Bloglines demo on other people's computers.

(People are used to having me order them out of their chairs. I think they like it when they hear me say "Well, let me show you!" Who doesn't want to break up a block of talking with a little show? It's the same kind of relief afforded by breaking up a long block of copy with a picture. Speaking of shows, have I told you that my performance of the Cowardly Lion keeps getting requested in late afternoon meetings that start getting giggly? I do a 1-minute excerpt from "If I were King of the Forest.")

So where was I? Right. Outlook comfort/only my office tradeoff. Maybe I'll get News Gator and have both demos ready to go.

I'm also a little interested in NewsGator's branded browser-based aggregator. As they suggest on their marketing page about it, it's perfect for associations to provide for their members. I wonder if it's priced within the reach of lean-running nonprofits.

As described on its site:

BitsCast is a versatile RSS reader/database/aggregator and podcast receiver/player designed from scratch to support the latest RSS technologies, including podcast and vblog. It features a powerful database query tool supported by Microsoft JET engine, a seamless integration with webpage browser/media player for news or music/video experience, and a full suit of tools to manage downloaded media files.

BitsCast beta. Check out the logo. It's an orange square. Two tiny picky things: 1) Let's hear who's behind it, and 2) It should be "an" before RSS, not "a."

A Marketing Profs online seminar on RSS will be held next week. I've been seeing more and more offerings like this. I think it means that RSS adoption is shifting into another phase. We may not like some of what we see when marketers start getting RSS.

What do you call the warfare technique where you slash and burn and move on? It will come to me.

This feels like the same sort of thing. First faxing and phoning was abused to the point where targets hated it and it was regulated, so it's been largely abandoned in favor of e-mail. Now e-mail is being abused, so on we go to RSS. At least it's not intrusive, though I'm sure unscrupulous marketers are trying to find ways to trick us into getting pitched against our will.

The built-in aggregator in Drupal is pretty cool.

Click on "news aggregator" in the sidebar. I have my OPML blog there, and the learnandteachonline.com blog that is being replaced by this blog, the one you're reading. If you click on "sources," then on the orange feed button, you can get an OPML file of the feeds.

I can output titles in the sidebar if I want, so you wouldn't have to do any clicking to see the syndicated blogs' headlines. I didn't opt to do that. The appearance of the headlines in the sidebar has configurable ubiquity -- I instruct Drupal, for example, to put a block of them in the sidebar on all pages except these, and then I'd list the exceptions.

I wonder what happens if you syndicate a blog like Dave's; he doesn't put headlines on short items. I'll try it and see.

Just a few minutes later...

No, the aggregator doesn't like feeds like that. Look at this. The first entry is from my old blog. The other three show how the Scripting News feed outputs on the news aggregator page:

And here is how Dave's feed looks in the sidebar:

That wouldn't do.

Of course there is a school of thought that outputting feeds is content stealing. I don't have a problem with it unless it's used by get-rich-quickers. Drupal is probably too hard to deploy for many of them but there are add-on aggregators for the popular blogging tools being marketed specifically to that crowd. I hate that.

Reading the comments about Dave's beta OPML validator, it sounds like a shift occurred just in the last week or two. I think OPML adoption just went into second gear. As more and more establishment entities are doing something with OPML, it's getting harder for anybody who might be inclined to dismiss it, to brush it off as a inviable format. So, might as well shrug and get on with it.

Ugh. Read this if you want to feel worms crawling over your skin.

Sometimes I wonder if there might be a way to attack internet scammers of all stripes through prevention -- at the source, in addition to working the reactive angle by coming up with technological countermeasures. The way the system deals with spammers is like an insect elimination method that assumes bugs will come to your garden or house, and the only way to be rid of them is to kill them off once they arrive.

Same goes for internet security, which always makes me suspicious because hackers and security experts often seem to be two sides of the same coin. Maybe there's more money to be made in reactive measures than there is in prevention.

I'm not saying I have any viable prevention ideas, but maybe other people do. The only weapons I know how to use are implements of psychological torture. Like shame. Shame wouldn't work on the supply side -- people like the purveyors of this RSS to Blog software, or the people who make and sell things like scripts that harvest email addresses from web pages. They're shameless, probably beyond redemption.

But the demand side could be worked. Certain buyers of this stuff might be persuaded that there's no honor in making money by ruining the search experience or forcing their messages on people who didn't ask for them. When I was in the PR agency business, my proposal for this would have included working through the "influencers," in this case probably internet marketing experts. Popular marketing site editors, speakers and authors would be approached through email and on the phone with suggestions for including respect for consumers in their teaching. The influencers would be reminded that a high-road message would earn them more respect.