Re: Can someone explain what's so great about RSS?

You only download the feed. The enclosure is a tag that points to the actual file. Atom feeds have modified times too so the podcasting software shouldn't be downloading the podcast over and over. --Joe On Jul 31, 2005, at 3:12 PM, Justin Patrin wrote:

On 7/31/05, Joe Stump <joe@joestump.net> wrote:

I liken RSS to email for webpages. First off, it's WAY easier to sub/ unsub from RSS feeds than it is mailing lists. Also, I can aggregate my feeds. For instance, I can have Slashdot and CNN Technology news all in the same "inbox" on my aggregator. Also, there is an "ecapsulation" (I think that's the tag) that allows you to attach other media to posts, which is being used for podcasting. That way when a new podcast shows up in the feed it's automagically downloaded into iTunes and then onto my iPod. Basically, I don't have check 15 websites each morning. I open my aggregator, check my inbox and THEN click through if I feel like reading the whole story (if it doesn't show up in my aggregator).

Perhaps I simply haven't seen the right programs. What is a good aggregator that can keep track of new things and allow me to read them at any time? I can understand a bit from the website maintainer's perspective as mailing lists can be troublesome, but I personally like my e-mail just fine. It keeps track of what I've seen and not, I can get news, bug reports, and CVS commit information all in one place, and it's *push* instead of *pull*....for real. One thing that I really don't get is that with RSS you end up downloading the same thing multiple times. You get the same news over and over with sometimes a new entry or 2. With "podcasting" (argh) doesn't this mean you'll be downloading the same content over and over? And hence the website has increased traffic and bandwidth requirements.

On Jul 31, 2005, at 2:21 PM, Lee Braiden wrote:

On Sunday 31 July 2005 22:14, Justin Patrin wrote:

I've been seeing RSS gaining more and more popularity over the last years and I simply do not understand why. Why is RSS so great? What does it do that is so great and wonderful? The only thing it seems to have over anything else is that it's using XMLwith a standardized format. Other than that, RSS seems to me to be not any more useful than, say, a daily e-mail with news (or whatever) from whatever you're getting the RSS from.

It's not the implementation of the technology that's great; it's the technology itself, the fact that RSS has become the de-facto standard, and that as a new, almost-standardised technology, it's USEFUL in terms of aggregators, saving people time, and bringing them more information in an easier way. Might seem simple, but that's how progress happens. -- Lee Braiden http://www.DigitalUnleashed.com

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