Monday, March 03, 2003

RSS and Disintermediation Is RSS a Double-Edged Sword for Web Publishers?: Mike Butcher raises a very interesting issue of RSS feeds and its utility to web publishers: "Because... [via PAID: the economics of content]   A note about the fact that consumers using RSS has little incentive to register with a site, or even necessarily view the site --- depending on the structure of the RSS content.  It's true, but we can evolve this pretty quickly.  At a minimum, it's not that hard to put the RSS content behind an authenticated HTTP address.  My news aggregator (NewzCralwer) enables me to supply authentication information to a RSS/RDF URL, so if, theoretically, the publisher required registration and idenity to get to subscription content via RSS, that would be fine.   But it does point to a bigger fact --- RSS separates the content from its home/host.  It actually allows one to consider the actual content value in and of itself.    Finally, there's nothing stopping an RSS supplier from inlining ads, cookies and other things into the content. 4:41:24 PM    comment []

Ergonomics of TV on a PC/Device TV Content the Next Big Target for RealNetworks: This according to Merrill Brown, senior VP of RNWK's RealOne service. "We think people will be watching... [via PAID: the economics of content]   From Paidcontent.org, a blurb from a senior mucky muck at RealNetworks on their belief that TV style content will be delivered and consumed on consumer devices like screens in cars and PDAs.  It raises an ergonomics question:  what is a comfortable form-factor for view video content?  Is a PC with full screen video resonable ergonomics?  What about smaller-scale devices that are mobile -- the car, the PDA.  Just because you can doesn't mean you will.  What do you think?   4:35:11 PM    comment []

Microsoftie gets the RSS Religon? New Blog Aggregator... I feel somewhat guilty that the www.asp.net website doesn't publish its content yet via RSS (examples: article of the day, new control gallery submissions, frequent posts on the forums, etc).  We need to get that changed (I'm putting it on my long list of things todo). [via ScottGu's Blog]   Scott Guthrie (product lead on ASP.Net and .NET Framework at Microsoft) had a quick blog item based on a conversation we had, and came to the right conclusion:  RSS is wicked cool in making structured content available to machines in an easy way.  Great to see someone at Microsoft get excited about it!   4:29:24 PM    comment []

Gillmor Comments on DRM Conference Digital Restrictions Management I'm heading this morning to the Digital Rights Management Conference at the University of California-Berkeley. They've put together a sterling... [via Dan Gillmor's eJournal]   This is a great set of notes from a recent DRM conference.  Includes commentary from Microsoft, Real, Larry Lessig, Hal Varian, and lots of folks from media and ISP industry. 4:16:46 PM    comment []