The Official Roll Call..

First time in a LONG time that I looked at the Roll Call after a House of Reps vote.  Strange days.  We'll be OK.

Mike

Why are RSS Feeds so complicated?

This post comes from Andy Sernovitz' Damn I Wish blog...

RSS Feeds....those of us in the social media business have done an awful job explaining them. We make it worse with a mishmash of terms for the exact same thing (RSS, XML, syndicate.) I think we should set an industry standard to just call them "feeds" and drop all the other terms, and use this symbol

I had an really painful flight recently listening to a software engineer try to explain them to very nice, patient, and interested couple for 2 hours. (It didn't help he was trying to show them how it worked on his computer that was offline because we were on a plane. Grrr.)

The next day my dad asked me about them.

Here's my attempt at a clear answer to: "What are RSS Feeds?"

1. Many web sites publish updates whenever they have a new post or story. This is the "feed."
2. You can use a program called a "feed reader" to automatically collect all those stories so you can read them in one place. Think of it as an inbox for news.
3. It's quite handy--all your favorite stories come to you, instead of you having to go check a bunch of sites all the time looking for new stories. When there's something new, it shows up in your reader automatically.
4. There are also feeds for things like eBay searches or Craigslist posts. You could have your feed reader automatically track any new eBay listing for a particular item you are looking for.
5. You know if a web page has a feed if you see this icon: . It might also be near the top of your browser.
6. If you see these terms, they are all the same thing: RSS, XML, Syndicate This Site.

To get started:

1. Get a feed reader. My favorite is the free Google Reader. http://reader.google.com/
2. When you see the icon, click it to subscribe.
3. Start reading.

Technorati Tags: rss, internet marketing, cool site

Free tools for your website, as discussed yesterday...

Yesterday was another great Cool Talk webcast. If you were on the call, you heard us talk about perhaps the best place to get free, easy-to-install CGI scripts to make your website shine...

There's over $8,000 of auto-installing web software at your fingertips at John Saya's CGI Connection.

CGI Connection has a unique feature called an Auto-Installer, which automatically installs and configures software to your web site. So no programming knowledge is required.

Some of his auto-installing software includes:

• Membership Management
• Chat Rooms
• Banners and Graphics Creation
• Survey Makers
• Form Development
• Video Streaming
• Many other Advertising and Promotional Tools

You can login here. (Believe me, the free stuff alone is worth the trip...especially this tool which makes sure your e-mails are getting through to your web site visitors and newsletter subscribers)

Your opinion is very important to me and everyone who visits this blog so please come back here and let us know about your experiences with CGI Connection

Have a great weekend,

Mike

Affiliate Summit

Join my in NYC a week from Sunday!


Stay tuned to this blog for my report on Affiliat Summit's Social Media Conference in NYC. I'll have a lot of very valuable information to share.

Mike