RSS and WAP - another RSS question

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Lisa Rein
| 
| I'm having trouble understanding why or if RSS even matters 

For me that's very simple. I like to keep track of news from lots of
different web sites, but I _really_ dislike having to keep revisiting
each site all the time to see if there is anything new. (Especially
with sites that are rarely updated, or dog-slow, like slashdot.)

The nice thing about RSS is that for the sites that support it it
completely removes that need. Instead I can just tell my RSS viewer to
get new stories when I feel like an update and it will list the new
stories nicely with the source etc in the client window.

Then I remove the ones that don't seem interesting and make the client
open the interesting ones in my browser. In fact, this is so nice that
I notice that I tend to just skip the non-RSS sites, and I also note
that it allows me to keep track of more sites than the old model.

The next feature for the client is probably going to be filters, so
that I don't have to see stuff that I know a priori won't be of
interest.

| (despite its apparent level of widespread adoption) and

Well, that's IMHO the other reason why it matters. It's a first
example of an application like the global XML applications that were
envisioned when this whole XML thing started that has succeeded in
terms of adoption. Personally I think that is very important.

| am trying to determine its level of inclusion in my books/classes.

I use it extensively in talks and classes, and am finding that it
seems to go down well, probably because:

 - anyone can understand what it's about
 - the documents are so simple
 - when presented in the right way the utility becomes obvious

--Lars M.


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