an ordinary blog — andr3.net

Yesterday was RSS Awareness Day and I forget to mention it here. Apparently we're supposed to give a push forward to RSS, make even more people aware of this centre piece of the Web as it stands today. So here goes my share, even if belated by one day.

The Video

If you don't know what RSS is, you probably haven't watched this yet. Please, do so now.

↑ Commoncraft: RSS in Plain English

More?

If you didn't get it, don't feel bad. Watch it again or if you don't understand english very well, back in the day (august 2005) I wrote a little piece about them in Portuguese. Introdução às Feeds.

Also, over at the Mobifeeds blog, I wrote Publishers who don’t understand the medium they’re in. Go have a look, if you're publishing feeds somewhere.

RSS, Atom or RDF?

Technically speaking, why do we refer to all feeds as RSS? There are other formats like Atom and RDF that, albeit offering more features in terms of describing pieces of information, are more complex. They are still used, but over time, RSS became synonym for "feeds". Thus, the KISS theory proves itself yet again. RSS established itself by its simplicity.

As a send-off, I'd like to share a recent quote that stroke home. Specially, given the slow pace of this blog.

I don't get why people unsubscribe from feeds that aren't updated often... that's when you SHOULD be subscribing so you don't miss the gems.

– Simon Willison on twitter

I'm glad some of you are still around, thanks to this beautiful piece of the puzzle.

Happy RSS Awareness Day, everyone. Belatedly.