The options for seamless access and utilization of RSS content by non-technical information workers is almost non-existent.
To combat this, we've experimented with using Microsoft Office Research Services for delivering a rich search experience based on RSS content sources. We do this by creating virtual RSS respositories (SmartSpaces which are really domains of interest) that also provide transformations to MOSTL (Smart Tags) and ORS (Office Research Services). Users simply subscribe to a research service through any Microsoft Office 2003 application and then begin to "discover" information that flows through the RSS collection for which the service is based. This approach is delivered in two general solutions - a SmartSpace that is cumulative (all feed items are persisted even if they drop from the current feed list), and a moving window on the feed content. There are reasons for both behaviors but I'll delve into that another time. "I believe that subscription and aggregation are features that appeal to the mainstream, and the number of users who use RSS without having any clue about the underlying technologies could easily dwarf the number of “power” users. There are certainly people who feel differently -- people who think that aggregator usage is low because most users don't want or need the functionality. But I'm pretty sure that uptake is low because of poor user experience at this point." -- Joshua Allen Joshua is right - eventually, the number of people benefiting from RSS will far outweigh the technical audience just as the number of people benefiting from all XML use cases does so today. RSS is an implementation detail that will fade into the backdrop just as ODBC and SQL did (ergo, users aren't aware that they use SQL when making an airline reservation). "To be honest, the non-technical end-to-end user experience for discovering and using subscription/aggregation is pretty crappy today." -- Joshua Allen Joshua hasn't seen a SmartSpace. ;-)
| 
