Functional Feeds (and other stuff)
Posted on February 12, 2006
Filed Under Tech |
Richard McManus reminds me that I was working on a post about disposable and personal feeds…actually it builds on a previous post about wider uses for functional feeds.
The point being that I don’t think we have yet scratched the surface when it comes to RSS, which is going to permeate our media consumption habits and public/private interactions to a much greater extent than it already does and probably in ways we havn’t thought of yet.
I already subscribe to 150+ feeds to stay abreast of stuff I am interested online (there’s probably only 10-20 must read dailies), but of these only a small number are what I would describe as functional…feeds that provide some utility other than as a channel for consuming content. Think persistent Technorati searches, UPS package tracking feeds, or perhaps persistent eBay searches. This is where I reckon it starts getting really interesting.
Here’s a few things I have recently wished were available to be subscribed to:
- Our family calendar (so I can subscribe at work)
- Site traffic reports, campaign reports, and sales reports at work in such a way that they’re accessible on my PC or mobile device
- Project feeds at the office to keep up with what is going on in different parts of the business (and be able to filter these for keywords etc to cut down the noise). This also means getting documents via enclosures auto downloaded to my desktop. This should be totally possible today with the right client.
- A feed of the best airfares on routes I am interested and within price points I choose
- Coupons/discounts for stores in my neighborhood (by zip code), and maybe one for lunch places around where I work.
- A feed for any persistent relationship I have which involves regular info, e.g.. utility companies (water, power, gas, phone etc) or my bank for the delivery of statements (downloaded via enclosures perhaps). Of course some of these will require a client capable of handling robust security.
- RSS available for every trackable purchase I make. You can do this already, but I’m looking forward to vendor supplied solutions which make it drop dead simple…they should send me the RSS tracking url (a ‘disposable’ feed) when I get my confirmation email. Or better yet, how easy would it be for Amazon to give me a personalized RSS feed (which could include tracking info) instead of sending me loads of email related to any of my purchases.
This is a very short list. Just think of all the persistent relationships you have with other parties…I bet there’s a million instances when RSS would be a simpler way for information to flow. And feeds can be easily personalized, it is not just one to many (as with regular media). Anywhere you have a persistent relationship with a 3rd party there’s a basis for personalization. I just don’t want this stuff via email anymore because it is important to me, and RSS is more robust and trustworthy (cause I drive it).
Of course subscribing is one thing, but what about publishing?
RSS is baked right into just about all content management systems today, and certainly any blog software worth using offers feeds out of the box. So with these we can easily publish a feed for pretty much anything we want. Still I have a feeling that RSS as a transport mechanism might be quite useful in itself, without a blog even…I mean why not use RSS to send yourself reminders, or leads to your sales team members, or to deliver a training materials to your staff or customers.
Wide spread personal publishing of feeds for personal and public use won’t happen until we get a certain ubiquity which we havn’t yet reached. But when Outlook ships with a reader built in we’ll get ubiquity very quickly. And at this point I think we’re going to want to publish RSS as easily as we can subscribe to it, which is not to say that RSS is a messaging protocol (although it could be I think)…just that there’s loads of instances when RSS is probably better than email, simply because of that trustworthiness.
Anyway, in summary, there’s a tonne of scope to improve the flow of info in our daily lives with functional feeds, while the publishing of feeds (for public and personal uses) is going to become much more common when feed readers hit the mainstream. They are not there yet.
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Couldn’t agree more. By the way, I guess you’ve seen RSS Calendar, which has the kind of funtionality you mention on the calendar front.
Agreed Charles, early days yet!