The Future of RSS is Not BlogsWritten by S. Housley
Blogs vaulted RSS into limelight but are unlikely to be force that sustains RSS as a communication medium. The biggest opportunities for RSS are not in blogosphere but as a corporate communication channel. Even now, businesses that were initially reluctantly evaluating RSS are beginning to realize power and benefit of RSS information avenue. The inherent capacity for consumers to select content they wish to receive will be driving mechanism for keeping advertisements to a minimum and content quality consistent. Like Internet when it first started, blogs were emboldened by "cool factor". As novelty of being new and cool wears off, Internet webmasters and bloggers alike are realizing that maintaining a website or blog is time-consuming. "Coolness" often wears off if a channel is not monetized. With ease of blogging and array of blogs available, only a handful will be able to sustain fresh, constant, unique content and generate any sort of reasonable or significant revenue. As a result, blogs as we know them today will fade into background, with many blogs being abandoned. RSS, being a tool that saves Internet surfers time and allows webmasters to re-purpose and re-package existing and new content will, in my opinion, continue to thrive. A business effectively using RSS can bring new site visitors, increase search engine positioning, and generate product interest. The flexibility of RSS as a communication medium and expansion capabilities of enclosure tag will allow RSS to flourish as an online marketing tool. Each day businesses are adopting new uses for RSS, and users are becoming accustomed to skimming content that *they* choose in a single centralized location.
| | Do You Say What You Mean?Written by John Sheridan
Do You Say What You Mean?It's generally accepted that majority of people learn to speak from a very early age, and on average a basic vocabulary is formed between ages of four and six years old. As we get older our method of using language changes and we end up speaking in such a way that if everything we said was to be taken literally effects could be amusing or tragic. With language, we know what we want to say; we often think we have said it; unfortunately, more often than not - we haven't. Some years ago, I worked in a taxi office taking bookings over phone. You would assume that it would be simple enough to say, “Could I book a taxi please?" Rule one - never assume! Requests for taxis came as, "What's your soonest taxi?" "When is your fastest taxi?" "How long is your next taxi?" "What's your next taxi?" Now obviously I knew they all meant they wanted to order a taxi - but that is not what they said. After a little while, I got to thinking what would happen if I answered their questions literally - so I did. The first of many similar conversations was as follows. Customer. "How long is your next taxi?" Me. “About 4 yards.” Customer. "What?" Me. "About 4 yards." Customer. “What **** are you talking about?" Me. "You asked me how long my next taxi would be and I told you about 4 yards" Customer. "You knew what I meant" Me. "Yes but I answered your actual question." Customer. " **********!! " Puts phone down. (I didn't have a taxi available anyway!)
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