I find that it is always a mistake to say you are a tech columnist to someone you meet at a cocktail party. If they don’t immediately say “Sorry, I’m looking for a pillar to talk about”, then they must ask: “Well, can you explain to me what RSS is and why I should pay attention to it.” Is it?” At this time, I would always pretend to be food poisoning, so as to avoid the subsequent “torture”. The reason why it is said to be torture is because the concept of RSS is simple but very scratching, (a) it is difficult to explain (b) ordinary people should have a much better understanding of it than it is now. The first time I mentioned RSS was in a column about 4 years ago. If a recent online survey I conducted has some reference, then we can find that people in the world can still be divided into two categories, one category of people. Being in touch with RSS all day long is nothing new to them. (For the question “What is your overall feeling about RSS”, 15% of respondents chose “It changed my life. Me.” I would call my children R, S, and S.”), and another type of people would still answer the question “What is RSS?” when faced with questions like “How long have you used RSS?”
So: Regardless of whether you have asked or haven’t asked me what RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is, for the benefit of readers, I will explain what RSS is and how it is good for you. First of all, please think of information as water, and the library is a lake. Information carriers such as books and periodicals are poured into this “lake” like water. Those hoping for information came to the lake and scooped the water out of the lake. Although there is constant water flowing in and out of the lake, most of the water still stays in the lake. If we want to get this water, we must go to the lake. Web pages are largely similar.
Various kinds of information are constantly being aggregated into the “lake” of the library, but this process is generally smooth. The emails sent to us are different, the water of information is surging. This information is much more useful to us, because the water is no longer static, and we no longer need to go to the lake to scoop the water ourselves. But as in the past, we still have to rely on others to fill our bucket with water. We still can’t control what kind of information we can get, and when and how to get this information. Because of this, a major disadvantage of e-mail is that we often receive a lot of dirty water-spam. If information is like water, then when we need this water, there must be a way to transport the water to our home, just as tap water flows into the home through a pipe. This is RSS: a way to get information into our hands in a way that suits us. RSS is the pipe and valve that allows us to click and manage the flow of information.
Once you understand what RSS is all about, everything is simple. In today’s world where all kinds of information are flooded with disasters, RSS has quickly become popular as soon as it comes out. In the online survey I conducted, a quarter of the respondents subscribed to more than 50 RSS information sources, 17% of the respondents subscribed to as many as 200 information sources; about 5% of the respondents subscribed to their information sources More than 500. (This may not be the whole story: 3% of respondents chose the answer “How can I have time to count them?”.)
If the above answer can explain some problems, RSS may Has become a victim of its own success. The more people rely on it, the more sources of information are available online. So there was a dumbfounding consequence: RSS simplifies the way we get information, but it greatly increases the information we are exposed to, to the point that it is difficult for us to resist. Most RSS users have dozens of information sources stored in the reader (reader is the software we use to collect and read RSS information. You can think of it as a storage tank that stores all your information. .) But people eventually don’t have time to read many articles in the reader. More than 60% of the respondents in the above survey said that they actually read less than half of the articles from the information source.
So how to avoid these problems when using RSS? The best way is to get in touch with RSS from the browser you use every day. No need to download any special software, just use an online reader such as Google Reader (www. google.com/reader) or Bloglines (www.bloglines.com). Please follow the suggestions below when adding RSS feeds.
Please remember: Don’t be busy adding information sources. In doing so, you will soon be trapped in information and unable to cope with it. There are too many things you should read but unable to read. Be mercilessly delete those sources of information that do not really interest you, and those sources of information that you don’t have time to read about the linked content. According to reading necessity, reading interest and reading benefit, the information sources are classified into different folders.
In fact, there will be more and more information from RSS, but people must first streamline their RSS information sources. We need to forget the existence of RSS and only unscrew this information faucet when needed. We should not take this information pipeline system too seriously. As Taka Muraoka, the developer of RSS reader software Awasu (www.awasu.com), said, people want to know everything, but what do they really want to know? What do they really need? How do they want to use this information? Of course, I will not tell you that RSS needs to be slimmed down at a cocktail party. Even if you say that, you may not be interested in listening.
(Editor’s note: The author of this article, Jeremy Wagstaff, is a columnist for the “Loose Wire” technology column of the Wall Street Journal. The content of the column involves technology products, computers, software and other related fields.)
(The article is taken from the Wall Street Journal Chinese website)