[IxDA Discuss] RSS feeds for non-geeks

[Niklas Wolkert]

Hi Robert, Interesting thougths.

Just for further refrence. I consider myself belong to the geek crowd
you refer to but after after trying to adopt RSS for several years I
didnt find a satisfying way of doing it until I started to use flocks
built in aggregator with auto discover and, well.. two-click
subscription functionality. 'Yet another application' to start up just
dont ring my bell.

Secondly I'd like to point out SonyEricssons exellent implementation
of RSS functionality in their webbrowser/RSS-reader on their latest
mobile phones (I've tried the K800i) which has built in auto discover
and aggregation. Personally I think mobile devices is a superb place
for readeing aggregated news as bandwith and screen real estate are
big issues there.

I wish I had a simlarly simple solution on my Nokia phone.

--N

On 1/16/06, Robert Hoekman, Jr. <mmbeta at gmail.com> wrote:
> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted material.]
>
> I've been thinking lately baout RSS feeds. From what I can tell, they seem
> to only be used by 1-5% of the connected world, and I've been imagining what
> could be done to make RSS more accessible to the average non-geek computer
> user and make RSS more popular.
>
> The following is purely hypothetical. Just ideas to see how it could be done
> in a perfect world.
>
> 1) I think the addition of a standalone RSS aggregator to a suite like MS
> Office could do a lot. I'm not usually one to trust MS with the ability to
> create intuitive applications (so that users could easily see the purpose
> and usage of an aggregator), but the sheer ubiquity of Office could at least
> raise interest and usage of RSS.
>
> 2) I think a friendlier name is in order. "RSS" just doesn't mean anything
> to non-geeks who barely associate three-letter acronyms as file extensions.
> Maybe something like "LiveUpdate" would make it friendlier and more
> meaningful.
>
> 3) Getting away from Office: If an RSS aggregator was built into each
> browser, a better version of what Safari has now, it would be fantastic for
> a user to be able to click the link to the feed, and automatically subscribe
> to it without ever having to see a page full of XML. Safari does this pretty
> well - it displays an "RSS" button in the Address bar any time you're on a
> page that links to a feed. This would be great, because then we wouldn't
> even have to include RSS links in our pages. We would just set it up and
> browsers would auto-discover it.
>
> As far as what can actually be done now, what do you think best practices
> might be? I think, at the very least, we could be displaying the actual URLs
> for feeds on a separate page (the landing page from the RSS link), and
> instructing users to copy/paste the URL into their aggregator. this way, no
> one ever has to see the XML.
>
> But the fact that it's called "RSS", and that non-geeks have no idea what it
> is, let alone have software for it, means that regardless of what we do now,
> it may never gain mainstream popularity.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> -r-
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