Dissident

RSS Explained

It remains something of a tragedy that most public sector web sites still don't support RSS.  I can probably accept that council officers and other senior public sector workers don't understand what RSS is, but surely the various ICT departments or outsourced web design agencies have a duty to inform and educate the people they've been commissioned by to host/design/manage their web sites?  Well, clearly not! In the mean time, if you want to know what is happening at your local council, you'll have to keep visiting their web site.

For the uninitiated, here's a very useful article about RSS (all you need to know but were afraid to ask).

Google Gears up for off-line browser apps

As a closet fan of all that is 'Google', I was wondering when I should make the final step in my transition from Bloglines to Google Reader. I've been using both for some time now, which is bit of a pain when I have to add and categorise a new feed since I end up replicating the process twice. However, I think the recent announcement about Google Gears is the tipping point I needed. So, sadly, it's goodbye to Bloglines, but loyalty only goes so far.

Basically, Gears is a browser add-on that enables web-based applications to run locally whilst off-line. The product is in Beta at the moment, and only supports the Google Reader (RSS feed aggregator). However, we can expect to see support for Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Mail, Google Blogger, and in fact any of their applications where there is value to be gained by working off-line and on-line.

Looks like another killer app to me!

Introduction to RSS

A very good introduction to RSS, courtesy of The Common Craft Show

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.