Nice (and Humorous) Description of RSS Feeds
Bob Stepno reminded me of his piece explaining RSS feeds from a few months back. At first, I was shocked that he didn’t mention my terrific intro to RSS article everyone’s sick of reading about, but then I noticed he constructed the page before that was published.
I like his wine and fish metaphor: "Q: Why bother with an RSS aggregator if you can read the same content through the browser? Why have the same wine in two bottles?
A: Wine is the wrong metaphor. Wine improves with age. News is more like fish. RSS syndication is a matter of getting the freshest news. …"
I disagree that browsers shouldn’t have an aggregator. If my browser has a component where I can get to my e-mail, why is having an aggregator as part of it so different? Aggregation, very simplified, is like a cross between e-mail and Web browsing. Sometimes it seems silly to me to think that if I used a desktop aggregator, it would be a separate application. Especially since I use Web-based aggregators, I don’t understand why a browser couldn’t have a built-in aggregator. It some ways, it could be a very sophisticated list of bookmarks.
Also, Bob doesn’t talk about Atom feeds at all, which are different from RSS feeds and worth at least noting.
