|
Newspapers of the 21st century
I've always been engrossed in the written word in one form
or another. I just started to get into blogging and news
feeds recently. After publishing articles and
newsletters for several years through opt-in
newsletter subscriptions, I never considered syndicating my
articles as an option, only because it looked so
complicated to learn how and I really didn't expect it to
be so easy. I thought news feeds were only for news sites
like CNN or MSNBC.
It wasn't until I started noticing the
little orange XML and RSS icons popping up on other types
of sites that I started doing a little research on RSS.
That led me to download and test
RSSReader (a free standalone aggregator) to see how
subscribing to a rss news feed actually works. Then I
discovered that
Firefox had a built in RSS reader and some sites with
rss feeds automatically display an icon in the bottom
corner of it so you can easily subscribe and create
what's called a 'live bookmark' with tabs for each item.
There is also a plug-in rss reader for IE called
Pluck. I
thought that was pretty neat, so with a little more
research and a few hours of coding, testing and
validation, I had an XML/RSS news feed on my site too.
Then I submitted it to a few syndication sites.
Then it crossed my mind that syndicating news feeds on the web is a lot like my
very first job and how ironic that I'm still basically
doing the same thing to a degree. I had a paper route. I
had the largest route for after school delivery for the
evening news in my district back then. I had 140 to 160
customers at any given time. I got to meet people and make
friends that I would never have even known if I hadn't
delivered their paper and visited their house every week
to collect. I didn't realize at the time that I was
networking by also providing personal services that didn't
have anything to do with the papers I delivered. I knew
who needed a babysitter on Saturday night, the elderly
woman that lived alone and needed help carrying water into
her kitchen, the grumpy old man who always gave a bigger
tip if he couldn't intimidate me, the ones who had a
vision impairment and counted on me to make the correct
change, the woman who offered me a cool drink most days
just to sit and talk with her, which family just had a new
baby, who got married, divorced or widowed, who wanted to
hire someone to cut their grass and do yard work every
week, and I even met my future spouse (of 30+ years now)
on that paper route.
That paper route taught me a lot and it also helped me
develop a keen sense of people and how to size them up
quickly. There were a few people that I dreaded trying to
collect from. The creepy man in his thirties with inch
long fingernails that always wanted me to come inside the
house when his mother wasn't home, big red flag...
the smart-aleck guy who always showed me that weeks paid
ticket because he was getting them from a relative (the
district manager caught him)... the elderly
woman with a bad memory who every week insisted that she
just paid me a week ago but didn't want to pay by the
month because it was too hard for her to remember...
the yard with three Dobermans in it and a 'no
trespassing' sign posted where I had to catch them coming
or going to even have a shot at getting paid... and my
favorite type of customer, the ones who wouldn't pay
because they said they didn't even take the paper--but then would
complain when the delivery was stopped. :)
Besides the obvious safety reasons, motor route paper
delivery has long since replaced the neighborhood 'paper
carrier' and taking with it, the personal service and networking that
belonged to them.
Gone are the days
of school paper drives for recycling newspapers, lining bird
cages, swatting flies and puppy training with layers of disposable,
dried tree pulp for the majority of people who now have a
personal computer in their home. Now we have more modern alternatives to newspaper for
wrapping breakables when we move. We can use our 'finely shredded for
added security' financial documents and correspondence for that.
Plastic grocery bags just don't have the cushion that a
wadded up newspaper had, but they do come in handy for
stuffing balloon valances and carrying small amounts of
dirty laundry. :)
No one had a computer back then and if you had asked me
what I wanted to be when I grew up, I could not have
possibly said, "I want to be a web designer and
developer". So, it's hard to say which changed my life
more, my paper route or my computer.
If you've got a computer, you don't even need to hang out
at the local library to do research or get current news
anymore. Type a keyword or phrase into any search engine. Anything you want to know is right at your
fingertips from the comfort of your own home. Information overload and the time it takes to
sift through it consumes most of our spare time until we
discover the benefits of pop-up blockers, spam filters,
throw away e-mail addresses and news aggregators.
The end user is demanding more control of their internet
experience.
Now our news and topics of interest are stored on any
number of servers and delivered to us on demand through
rss news feeds if we so desire. We pick and choose what we
actually want to read by skimming and discard the rest,
just like the newspaper, we each have our favorite
sections and interests. If the world wide web is the new world library, search
engines are the 'card drawers', databases are the
'micro-fiche', the browser is the modern 'fiche' machine,
and web servers are the new publishing houses, then text
formatted in HTML, parsed through xml and rss is
the new newspaper of the 21st century.
With the ever increasing
problem of spam, growing numbers of traditional newsletter subscribers whose
e-mail addresses sometimes become targets for every
conceivable kind of advertisement, are increasingly moving
toward better methods for getting the information they
want. It may well be that
rss news readers have become the method of choice, delivering not only news as it's
published, but interactive commentary as well as entertainment. However, the average
subscribers are more than just readers now, they are
active participants, publishers, writers and editors of
web sites and blogs. Portals, blogging sites and
free programs are making it easier for anyone who really
wants to publish, be able to participate in
the creation of information to a global audience. Just as
it was the crux of a successful paper route, the
personalization and interaction of people through blogs and news feeds
is what makes
them so appealing to readers. Not just worldly or local
traditional 'newsworthy' news that someone else picks for
us, but news on any topic of
interest... person to person. Anyone who thinks the
internet is just about technology or business is missing
the whole point. It's all about people and how to be of
service to people.
I'm in awe of the power and possibilities of the web,
which is probably why I research, study and earn my living
at it. It levels the playing field so everyone can
participate in the technology. Not just businesses and
geeks, but housewives, farmers, grandpas, students,
professors, artists, everyone from any walk of life can
input and participate.
Simply by creating an rss news feed for distribution
through an aggregator (news reader), our thoughts and
ideas can be delivered to the masses on demand
where it can be unsubscribed from at will and automatically
updated, without a hassle, giving us all the ability to
use
rss readers as a paperboy of sorts,
delivering 21st century news in a whole new neighborhood.
Oh yeah, remember that woman who offered me a cool drink
most days just to sit and talk to her? It turned out she
was sizing me up as potential daughter-in-law material.
You could say she hooked me up. This year will mark
our 33rd wedding anniversary... now, that's networking!
|
