No More Information Overload: Try RSS Feed Instead of E-Mail
This is not another column about spam, but that's where I have to start. Spam, or junk e-mail is, we're all agreed, the bane of our lives. But what if the problem is not so much spam, as e-mail itself?
Look at it like this: E-mail is our default window on the Internet. It's where pretty much everything ends up. I have received more than 1,000 e-mails in the past week. The vast bulk of that is automated--newsletters, newsgroup messages, dispatches from databases, press releases and whatnot. The rest is personal e-mail (a pathetically small amount, I admit), readers' mail (which I love, keep sending it) and junk. While it makes some sense to have all this stuff in one place, it's hard to find what I need, and it makes my inbox a honey pot for spammers. And when I go on holiday, it all piles up. Now, what if all that automated stuff was somewhere else, delivered through a different mechanism you could tweak, search through easily, and which wasn't laced with spam? Your inbox would just be what is e-mail, from your boss or Auntie Lola.
Enter the RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary or variations of the two, depending on who you talk to. It's a format that allows folk to feed globs of information -- updates to a Web site, an online journal (a Weblog, or blog), news -- to others. These feeds appear in programs called news readers, which look a bit like e-mail programs.
This also makes sense for those folk who may not subscribe to e-mail alerts, but who regularly visit any number of Web sites for news, weather, movies, village jamborees, books, garden furniture, or whatever. Instead of having to trawl through those Web sites each morning, or each week, or whenever you remember, you can add their RSS feeds to your list and monitor them all from one place.
RSS feeds aren't just another way to deliver traditional information. RSS feeds have become popular in part because of blogs -- online journals, usually run by an individual chronicling their experiences, thoughts and journeys around the Web. While many blogs are more like personal diaries, others are written by people who know what they're talking about, and have become a credible source of information and opinion for industry insiders. Many of these bloggers now offer updates of their Web sites via RSS feed. "There's an awful lot being created by individuals who are key figures in their markets," says Bill Kearney, who runs a Web site,
www.syndic8.com, that lists more than 20,000 such newsfeeds.
Good News for Companies
Blogs and RSS have, despite their unwieldy names, helped to level a playing field between traditional news suppliers -- news agencies, newspapers, news Web sites like CNN -- and those in or monitoring a particular industry. Some call it "nanomedia": An often-cited example is New York's Gawker (
www.gawker.com) which collects gossip and news from the Big Apple, many times scooping the local dailies. Indeed, blogs themselves came of age this year, first during the Iraq War when a young Iraqi translator calling himself Salam Pax ran a massively popular blog (dearraed.blogspot.com) from Baghdad, offering a compelling perspective on the conflict. Later, the New York Times felt the growing power of blogs when the plagiarism crisis prompted by reporter Jayson Blair was fuelled by blogs and other Web sites, all in real time.
We don't want to go too far. There's a lot of dross in blogs, and therefore a lot of dross in RSS feeds. And while the software has improved in recent months--check out news readers such as Newzcrawler (
www.newzcrawler.com) or Feedreader (
www.feedreader.com) -- it still feels slightly experimental. But as the format matures, I think our once-bright hopes for the Internet as a democratic, intelligent medium might be realized.
Part of it means throwing away what we traditionally think of as "news." Corporations are beginning to sense that blogs make an excellent in-house forum for employees. Small companies have found that running a blog for their customers -- say a real-estate agent sharing news and opinions about the neighbourhood property market -- pays better than any newspaper ad. Individuals -- consultants, columnists, one-man bands -- have, through well-designed, well-maintained blogs, built a critical mass of readers, some of whom become paying customers or subscribers. Teachers are finding RSS feeds useful for channelling subject matter to classrooms and sharing material with other teachers.
Is there money in it? One Canadian company, Serence (
www.serence.com), targets its form of RSS feed, called Klips, to companies automating specific tasks -- monitoring competitors, prospects or industry news, accessing critical internal data. There is, of course, a danger that what ailed earlier formats ends up ailing RSS feeds: This month, one company started carrying ads in an RSS feed, with mixed results. In the end, I think, some of this data will be good enough to pay for, some will be supported by ads, and some will continue to be done out of love.
RSS's strengths are simplicity and versatility: It can be added on to other programs -- the browser, Outlook, or be delivered to your hand-phone, hand-held device, or even as audio on your MP3 player. It's a lot more powerful than e-mail, and -- we hope -- will be guaranteed spam-free. Hurrah.
怎样获得一个清净的信息世界？
这回我们说的不再是垃圾邮件，但要从它说起。众所周知，垃圾邮件是扰乱我们生活的祸害，然而，如果问题不在于垃圾邮件，而在于邮件本身呢？
试想一下：电子邮件是我们接触互联网的默认窗口，也是大多数信息的集散地。上周我收到1万多封电子邮件，大多数是自动发送的时事通讯、新闻组信息、数据库邮件、新闻综述和一些莫名其妙的东西，其余的才是寥寥无几的私人邮件、读者来信和垃圾邮件。虽然邮箱里出现这些邮件并非反常，但要查找想看的东西的确非常困难，与此同时，我的邮箱也成了垃圾邮件喜欢光顾的地方。我一出去度假，邮件就堆成了山。现在，如果有这么一种邮箱，所有自动发送的东西都存在别的地方，以你能控制的方式接收这些信息，便于查找，不受垃圾邮件骚扰，那该有多好。这样，你个人邮箱里就只剩下有用的电子邮件。
这就是RSS方式。根据服务商不同，RSS要么指Really Simple Syndication，要么指Rich Site Summary，有时也是二者的混合。它是一种信息传播方式，将各种信息──网站最新内容、在线日记、新闻等──发送给别人。你可以通过一种叫"新闻读者"(news readers)的软件查看这些信息，有点象电子邮件的方式。
对那些没有订阅电子通讯，但经常上网查看新闻、天气、电影、庆祝活动、书籍、园艺等信息的人来说，这种服务也很有用。你不必每天早上、每个星期或想起来的时候才去各个网站搜集信息，只需将这些网站的RSS内容服务加入你的列表，即可从一个窗口浏览全部信息。
RSS服务并非只是发送传统信息的另一种方式，它的兴起在某种程度上得益于在线日记(blogs，即on-line journals)的兴起。在线日记是一种个人在网上记录其每日经历、想法和上网逸事的方式。虽然许多在线日记和私人日记差不多，但有些人的作品的确言之有物，成为信息和业内观点的可靠来源。不少这类的在线日记现在都通过RSS服务提供网站的更新内容。"那些在各自领域出类拔萃的个人以此方式提供了许多有用信息，"经营
www.syndic8.com网站的比尔-克尔内(Bill Kearney)说道。该网站现有2万多种RSS信息服务。
利好消息
虽然名字很怪，但博客(Blog)和RSS在传统新闻供应商（新闻机构、报纸、新闻网站）与特定行业跟踪者之间开创了一片新天地，有人把它叫做"微型媒体"。一个典型的例子就是纽约的Gawker(
www.gawker.com)，它上面收集了纽约街头的闲闻轶事，消息之快经常让当地报纸相形见绌。事实上，博客是今年才开始崭露头角的。伊拉克战争期间，一个自称萨拉姆-派克斯(Salam Pax)的伊拉克年轻翻译在巴格达记录自己的在线日记(dearraed.blogspot.com)，竟而大受欢迎，为这场战争提供了一个引人注目的新视角。此后，纽约时报(New York Times)感受到了在线日记日益强大的力量。自记者杰森-布莱尔(Jayson Blair)揭发纽约时报的剽窃丑闻后，在线日记和其他网站都在实时地记录事件过程，为此事呐喊助威。
我们把话题收一下。诚然，在线日记中有许多无用信息，因此RSS服务中也有很多这样的内容。虽然该软件近几个月已有所改进──如Newzcrawler(
www.newzcrawler.com)或Feedreader(
www.feedreader.com)等新闻阅读软件──但仍带有些实验性质。不过，我预计，一旦这种形式成熟起来，人们希望互联网成为一个大众智能媒介的愿望将得以实现。
这意味著抛弃我们对"新闻"的传统观念。公司开始感到，在线日记是其雇员进行内部交流的绝佳平台。小企业发现，为客户建立一个在线日记比做广告更有用。房地产代理公司可以藉此与客户分享周边房地产市场的新闻和观点。通过版面优良、维护良好的在线日记，顾问、专栏作者、歌手等一些个人吸引了大量读者，其中一些就此成为顾客或用户。教师也发现RSS服务有利于课堂交流，并能和其他教师共享资源。
在线日记能否赚钱呢？一家加拿大公司Serence(
www.serence.com)将其RSS软件Klips提供给企业，用以完成特定的任务──观察竞争对手动向、产品前景和行业新闻，以及获取重要的内部信息。当然，RSS服务还面临著一个无法免俗的风险：2003年6月，一家公司开始在RSS服务中插入广告，读者反应毁誉参半。我觉得，最终而言，有些信息是值得花钱购买的，有些RSS服务要靠广告维持，而有些仍将继续是个人热情的产物。
RSS的魅力在于其简单性和多功能性：它能被加进其他程序──浏览器、Outlook邮件，或发送到手机、掌上电脑上，甚至成为MP3播放器上的音频。RSS比电子邮件强大得多，而且我们希望它能免受垃圾信息的骚扰。但愿如此。
