Everyone should be using RSS
My father is no ludite. In fact quite the opposite. If it wasn’t for him giving me my first computer (a Kaypro II) I probably wouldn’t be a developer today. He also was the first person on the block to have a CD-ROM drive, and the first person to teach me how to use the internet ( ala Compuserve and Mosaic ). Obviously I charged ahead of him to the cutting edge long ago – but that doesn’t change the fact that he should understand and be open to relatively new technologies. My dad is also a news junkie. He has bought the New York Times every day for the last 30+ years. This is why it frustrates me so much that he of all people is still not using RSS.
Working in the world of the information super-highway, as I do I often forget that when I throw around terms like, RSS, API, XML, AJAX, and other fancy acronyms, to my family and friends, the response is usually something along the lines of “WARK?” or “Zuh?”. Over the holidays I tried to convert my Dad into an RSS user, and it just wouldn’t take. He already uses RSS, he just doesn’t know it. He has a my.yahoo page that he checks regularly for news and weather and if he wanted to he could easily add any RSS feed to that page – this blog for example. Alas, I couldn’t convince him of its worth. “Why? Its too complicated . . .”. It really couldn’t be simpler.
The fact is that this isn’t specific to my Dad or dads in general. All of my friends are using RSS, and they just don’t know it. They have their favorite podcasts in iTunes but don’t really know how they get there. If only they understood a little tiny bit about RSS they could harness the power and use it for general awesomeness. Like knowing when any synths are for sale in New York or cool photos of graffiti around the world or for my Dad – The New York Times for god’s sake!
Once you understand what RSS is (here here and here) then its just a matter of getting a feed reader or aggregator and subscribing at will.
RSS is the future, Dad, and if you subscribed to this blog’s feed you’d know that already.
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