RSS discovery

Finally I discovered the RSS-standard. I was willing to check it out for a long time, but I only found the time recently. RSS allows authors to publish information in a standard way based on XML (I guess?). These RSS-files can subsequently be picked by publishers to paste it in their website.
Another possibility is to use an RSS Aggregator client (I use NetNewsWire created by Ranchero Software) to view these RSS-files. It is very similar to Usenet-viewers: you subscribe to certain RSS_files (feeds) and the software checks whether new items have been published. You see in your client that you have not yet read them.

Is this interesting?
- No, because it is very similar to Usenet. It does not seem very innovative. It is just a file, which the end-user can grab through the HTTP-protocol and do with it whatever he wants;
- Yes, it is very interesting (I bought my client), because it is a very convenient way to check news, blogs, etc. You do not have to check out each website to see whether something is new or not. The client aggregates everything into a single viewer, thus within one view you can see all the news. In this sense it does remind me again of Usenet, which I found much more useful than the Web until the onset of spam in the Usenet-groups.

But is it interesting from an Online Services point of view? It belongs to the category Publishing. As end-users can read the RSS-files, it belongs to the Tele-Publishing category. If you however use a RSS_file to add content to your web-page, then your re-using content (syndication) and the service belongs to the Enabling Category, subcategory Publishing Tele-Services. Probably a specific subcategory should be created due to the standard that has been used behind the service.

By the way I found already an annoying item in the use of RSS. Some authors only publish the header and the first sentence of a news-item. If you want to read the story you have to go to the web-site anyway. I rather see the news right away, but I understand why they do it (view the ads).

Well so much for first impressions. Now I have to read up on this subject to see whether there is more to it. Also I want to know what all the fuss is about the standards.