[sluckxz]

Reading your second paragraph made me chuckle. Your point is likely spot on but I couldn't help thinking how most of that paragraph involved jargon that most people I know would get glossy eyed over. I wonder if rewording it to laymans or non 'geeks' terms might help.

Information on a webpage and 'the' webpage are not exactly the same. Rss uses information from the webpage to create a title and a short description in a way that you can view hundreds of titles and descriptions very quickly. When you find a title and or description that interests you a single click delivers the webpage in its authors intended form...

I think you're correct. If somebody said that to me before I had used Rss I might have glossed over as well.

edit: Sorry about the defunct company part.

[mikepk]

Heh, I was intentionally not using any of the explanatory metaphors. :) Trust me, in the many years we were at it I tried lots and lots of non-jargony, more-concrete, ways to get the concept across. I never found the one that seemed to click with everyone.

We also had the additional problem of trying to be the "next generation" of using RSS (application platform, dynamic filters, etc...) before anyone other than tech-inclined people "got" the first generation.

Learned lots of painful lessons from that company. :)

[maigret]

Also agree with the main points of the parent and yours. But I must admit, as a technician myself, it has always troubled me that a feed is bound to a webpage, thus I never used the RSS icon in the navigator bar. For me, a RSS feed is linked to some kind of information, a topic, a person. What is the CNN main page RSS feed about? The TV program? Breaking news? ALL news? No clue.