Dear K-Loggers,

The more I use RSS subscriptions (RSS is an XML-based format for headline
and news summary subscriptions), the more I like them. They allow you to
keep tabs on hundreds of news sources simultaneously. If you are using a
desktop news reader, you can get your subscriptions delivered to you every
hour automatically. Within the context of a Intranet-based K-Log network,
RSS feeds would allow you to keep track of what is going on across hundreds
of co-worker or project Weblogs. In many cases, reading these feeds would
be a good replacement for e-mail (I don't know about you, but I get way too
much stuff in my inbox to make sense of it all).

You can find available feeds by visiting aggregator sites like
www.syndic8.com (the Yahoo of syndication) and www.Newsisfree.com (an
excellent news portal) or by visiting sites themselves. Many sites with
feeds available sport an orange xml button like this:
http://jrobb.userland.com/images/xml.gif If you click on it, you will
get a page with the feed like the one from my Weblog:
http://jrobb.userland.com/rss.xml All you need to do to subscribe is cut
and paste the URL of the feed into the subscription box or your newsreader.
Another way to use feeds is to create a feed box powered by your sites
content management system. Here is an example of a feed box on Robert
Scoble's site (Windows XP news): http://scobleizer.manilasites.com

Here is a break down of the types of feeds available:

1) Weblog feeds. Many Webloggers support RSS subscriptions to their sites.

2) Natural news feeds. These feeds are created by the news organizations
themselves.

3) Scraped news feeds. These feeds are synthetic. They are built by
individuals who parse the front pages of news sites, extract the headlines
and descriptions, and then rework them into RSS feeds.

4) Filtered news feeds. This is another type of synthetic feed. Sites like
Moreover scan available news for specific keywords and create feeds for
specific topics. For example, here is a Moreover feed dedicated to Telecom
news: http://p.moreover.com/cgi-local/page?index_telecom+rss

5) E-mail groups. Yahoo Groups provides headline feeds. Unfortunately,
Yahoo only supports the distribution on headlines.


It's pretty clear that corporate K-Loggers could benefit from a combination
of employee Weblog feeds and external feeds (I would suggest filtered
feeds). Corporations can also add additional automated feeds to compliment
these:


6) Feeds from Lotus Notes databases. There are several projects underway
to make this happen. This would allow employees in an Notes environment to
both keep up with the Notes data they are required to keep tabs on and
provide a way for employees to K-Log data they find with annotations.

7) Pure data feeds. For example: feeds from systems hardware (a network
usage feed for example) or specific corporate systems (for example a
transaction system at a brokerage that provides data on the number of trades
in the last hour with other granular information such as market orders,
limit orders, and lot size). This is a great way to provide key execs or
personnel tasked with monitoring the health of their company with a
nontechnical way to do so. It would also provide an administrator with a
way to add annotations to specific data so as to provide others with a
greater level of insight into the data (a derivative feed that contains the
analysis).

The list of corporate feeds could easily be listed on a corporate Intranet
Portal for employees to take advantage of. All employees would need to do
is cut and paste the feed into their desktop newsreader. Further, these
feeds could be set up as K-Logs that would allow employees to browse through
the information in a time-organized format.

In general, RSS news is a great way to move information around an
organization. If combined with analysis RSS news can become a valuable
knowledge stream for employees.

Sincerely,

John Robb
http://jrobb.userland.com