Comments on: RSS v Web Feeds: sticking up for Microsoft

By: » Even Top 500 bloggers don’t know what RSS is The Blog Herald: more blog news more often

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 02:06:43 +0000

[...] not making fun at the unnamed political blogger because as I’ve written previously: Microsoft is right. (in part via Seattle PI)

[...]

By: Tommy

Tommy — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 07:17:31 +0000

I’m not really sure what all the hub bub is about…companies do this all of the time. Apple rebranded 802.11g as something funny like “Airport.” IEEE 1394 = firewire (Apple started this one?) = iLink (Sony?). I think one notable exception is USB…that name has stuck and doesn’t look like it’s going to be replaced by anything weird like “BlockPort” or “EasyConnect”.

When it comes to making friendly names for stuff, Microsoft seems to go out of their way. I mean look at the name “Windows Vista.” If that doesn’t have marketing speak oozing out of it, I don’t know what does. I work for MSN TV (a division of Microsoft) and can’t begin to count the hours we’ve spent in meetings arguing over what we’re going to call a setting or how we’re going to word sentences in help text (and I work in Test, not UX!!). Anyway, making things “friendly” is always the way to go…that’s how we have cars, telephones, Tivos (death to the VCR Timer!), and other interesting and neat tools for the modern world.

By: Yzabel

Yzabel — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 16:52:29 +0000

Erf, no thanks! I already feel like barfing whenever I see a Nth drawing/ad imitating the iPod ones just “to look cool”. I can only take that much! ;)

By: Duncan

Duncan — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:06:48 +0000

I like iFeeds Yzabel, maybe we should start promoting it :-)

By: Yzabel

Yzabel — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 12:52:12 +0000

I wouldn’t see any problem with the word “feed” myself, but this may be just because I’m used to it. However, when I speak of RSS, I tend to use “feed” for purposes of easiness, as I consider that it probably seems less “geeky” to people who’re not too web-savvy. Everything considered, it likely is. No problem with the “web feed” word for me here, it’s not the fanciest marketing-trendish-fashinon-y word ever created, but it’s easy to keep in mind.

Come to think of it, fortunately it’s Microsoft we’re talking about, else we would end up with iFeeds.

By: John (SYNTAGMA)

John (SYNTAGMA) — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 09:03:33 +0000

Dave Winer and Scoble are going to lose this one. Engineering terms always get replaced with soft marketing ones when the serious money gets involved. Over on Windows Visa blog I’ve suggested “Pulls” or “Pulldowns” or “Pullits” to emphasize the pull-down nature of feeds, as opposed to the “push” tendency of emails and newsletters. Jane Kim’s use of “Web Feeds” won’t last either because it’s two words when one will do.

By: Gerard McGarry

Gerard McGarry — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 07:30:05 +0000

Webmasters need to standardise the way in which they advertise XML/RSS feeds. Not everybody uses the 'big orange button' approach, so I often find myself scouring a web page looking for the feed address. On some occassions, I've had to view the page source to locate the feed address - for less canny visitors, this isn't an option. Since the BBC news website added RSS, they've carried the big orange button, with a link to their 'What Is RSS?' page. This has a user-friendly explanation of RSS and links to all of their popular RSS feeds. If more sites adopted this approach, maybe RSS would hit the mainstream - I can't imagine life without it! By the way, I've written a three-part introduction to RSS for my website to explain the technology to non-techies. If you're looking for a quick primer on RSS, please stop by!