The RSS Files -- Readers Weigh In

Let's hope it's not too far away.

RSS Couldn't Be Simpler

* "In the last few months I have been using the RSS feeds on Yahoo with great success. At home on my Mac, I really love the new RSS integration in Safari. I love how it tells you how many new stories are available for each feed. I also like how easy it is to add a feed." -- Paul Stauffer, North Potomac, Md.

* "Mozilla's standalone email product, Mozilla Thunderbird, will download RSS into its own set of directory folders. It works better than the browser, and because it downloads the entire article into the body of the email. (rather than just a teaser line or two) it's a lot easier to use. ... Good luck." -- Tim Herr, Fairfax, Va.

* "I just read your article from yesterday about RSS feeds. Really and truly -- it's not all that difficult once you get past the mysterious jargon! You mentioned Bloglinesand I'm sure dozens of people have already written to inform you: Bloglines DOES have a 'one click' subscription thingie. It's their 'Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet.' It's not especially easy to find it on their Web site!" -- Rebecca Hartong, Fairfax, Va.

I got a kick out of Rebecca's humorous note. Yes, all you have to do is get past the mysterious jargon. In a recent conversation I had with MCI senior executive Vint Cerf -- dubbed by many as "the father of the Internet," -- he told me that he sees RSS as being where e-mail was 10 years ago. Back then, he said, it was difficult just to persuade self-described technophobes to go online. They use the Internet now, all right, but the jargon is still enough to make most people turn back before they happen on something that, had they discovered it, they couldn't live without.

Give the People What They Want

* "I agree with you that it has to be really easy, otherwise it is just not worth the potential time drain to just check it out. It seems the same is true more and more, with the time poverty issue -- if it's not one-click (whether it's going to a concert, or signing your kid up for after school arts programs) it might just not fit into the schedule." -- Steve Ames, Morrisville, Vt.

This is a good point that Rijk from the Netherlands made above. Strange as it may sound, it's true that there are some people who have other things to do than check up on their 5,000 favorite Web sites. I am not one of those people.

* "I desperately want to try RSS but feel it's too daunting to try on my own." -- Zane L. Parker, Georgetown, Del.

Aw c'mon, Zane, you'll be all right. I did say "Kind Of Simple," not "Ridiculously Stupid Syndication." The best thing to do might be to follow the advice of some of the readers above. Yahoo, as some readers and one friendly PR rep informed me, makes this a quite easy process, though it still relies on Web site operators including Yahoo's RSS button on their pages.

* "Amen. The one-click idea seems to have escaped this part of the Web world and it's a shame. With many years of software development behind me, I took about 20 minutes to figure it out." -- Howard Davis, San Francisco, Calif.

That's 19 and 1/2 minutes more than the mystified average user will take.

* "[I] gave up on RSS, having decided that a) it was too difficult to implement simply, and b) I have to balance between staying informed and being swamped, and RSS came out looking too much like being swamped. However, I discovered a compromise solution with Lektora. It's very easy to use, gives me complete control, and even better, allows me to add sites that do not have RSS feeds, which would be half of the sites I troll." -- John McNeil, Christchurch, New Zealand.