syndication

I'm an RSS addict. Once you have an RSS reader set up, it's easy to get addicted. But RSS is still a fringe technology, used by a small percentage of the population. Why? Because it's broken. Getting better, but still broken.

The broken part has nothing to do with the competing standards -- RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 (which has nothing to do with 1.0), Atom, et cetera. That's behind-the-scenes stuff and users don't need to care.

The broken part is the subscription mechanism. It's too complicated.

Journalism.co.uk has an interview with Bob Cauthorn, who's been traveling and speaking in Europe recently, about the upcoming launch of what it calls a "'social network' for newspapers." And Cauthorn's company, CityTools LLC, has an informational page about the "Rosetta Project." I don't get the social network reference; it sounds like a content and advertising syndication system.

I lost a lot of work in progress when my Compaq Evo laptop bit the dust, but the thing that has surprised me is how hard it's been to lose my RSS feeds. A key part of my job is keeping up with what's happening on the Internet, and suddenly I'm ... disconnected. Bam! Losing a couple of years' worth of email is hard; losing a huge list of RSS feeds turns out to be much harder.

I have an OPML file backed up ... from about a year ago. The best stuff came from the most recently added feeds. It's like losing part of your mind.