Finding Content
Roy Osherove lists some RSS impediments. His big ones:
- Find out what RSS means
- Find a news reader
- Download and install it
- Find sites that give out RSS feeds
He then goes on to say that the technology won't go anywhere until MS embraces it and integrates it with Outlook. I'm not that cynical. Clearly, you have to know what RSS is before you can be interested in it. There have been a number of recent articles in the trade press (and in the general press even) - so I think that one is getting easier. Download and install? Well, I can't speak for the other tools, although I'm led to believe that most are pretty easy. BottomFeeder installs easily for every supported platform except Mac OS 8/9 - I don't have a Mac, but would be able to fix that one with access to one. On other plats, Bf installation is a pretty simple deal.
The last one, finding content? Well, that can be an issue. That's why BottomFeeder ships with feed building Wizards for:
It also supports auto-discovery, faulting back to Syndic8.com when scanning a site doesn't turn anything up. Sure, finding authors you don't know about (yet) is hit or miss - but so is finding them via the browser. And regardless of what the rdf/semantic web folks seem to think, it'll stay that way, IMHO....
