RSS Gains Some More Ground

While plenty of nerds, geeks and techheads around the world appreciate the beauty of RSS, it’s having trouble gaining the type of mainstream acceptance necessary to change the way people access their data streams and ultimately change the way the Web works. I believe two recent annoucements will help push RSS into the minds of the masses where it needs to be if it hopes to achieve what it’s capable of.

One of the biggest problems in the past has been the confusing array of icons and terminolgy used. Tiny orange buttons with ‘RSS’ or ‘XML’ on them have led to confusion or worse people ignoring it entirely. There hasn’t been a standard way to denote a feed or for that matter to even subscribe to one. Microsoft announced they will be using the new icon created by the Firefox team which likely means the cute new icon will become the de facto standard. Let’s hope Apple plays nice and implements it in Safari sooner than later.

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Writely is the Word

A great example of “Web as Platform” — one of the foundational concepts of Web 2.0 — is Writely, an online word processor. The site doesn’t have all the features of Microsoft Word, but it will certainly work for most writing situations. Even more appealing, it’s free.

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Radio War Heats Up

The fractionalization of former mass media empires continues as evidenced by what is happening in the radio industry. It is no longer just the local antenna-based signal broadcasters who are in the game. Internet radio is a fast-growing way for consumers to listen to what they want and not have their choices limited by radio signal coverage patterns. According to Arbitron, the online broadcast audience in the U.S. had already reached 51 million people by January of 2004.

Satellite radio also has some big momentum and there is a war on for new listeners between XM and Sirius. That satellite radio war will probably heat up even more with radio publicity king, Howard Stern, moving his show to Sirius on January 9. It is predicted there will be 35.6 million satellite radio listeners by 2010.

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Study Shows Email Continues As Strong Marketing Tool

Some marketing pundits have predicted decreased effectiveness for email and email marketing. Not so, according to DoubleClick’s Sixth Annual Consumer Email Study.

The study reveals that 78 percent of consumers have made a purchase as the result of an email message and 59 percent have redeemed an email coupon in a store. A strong brand is obviously important with 74 percent of consumers saying “a brand I know and trust” was a key consideration when responding to email marketing.

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WordPress 2.0 Released

WordPress released version 2.0 of it’s amazing and popular open source blogging platform over the holiday weekend. With a focus on easy installation, usability and web standards, WordPress is one of the best blogging tools you can use in my opinion. Available both as an install and a hosted option you can be up and running a site with WordPress in a matter of minutes.

Yahoo Web Hosting recently announced that WordPress will be included in their hosting packages as a simple install. If 2005 was exciting for WordPress, 2006 looks to be very promising as well.

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