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Tuesday, June 21, 2005
RS Huh?
As I noted earlier, most communicators still don’t know what RSS is and it still takes a while for the idea to seep in. (Once they get it, you can almost smell the rubber burning.) I know this from recent practical experience. I’m on my lunch break on the second day of my third “Writing for the Wired World” workshop in nine days. I introduce RSS in each one, and for those who don’t already understand RSS, it’s a challenge to wrap their minds around it.
Fortunately, in a classroom setting, I can take as much time as I need to help the concept gel. What about all those people who visit your page and see the orange box or the “Syndicate” link and have no clue what it means? Sure, there are plenty of RSS tutorials and explanations out there, but these people won’t know what it is to begin with, no less how to go about finding an online guide.
To address this issue, Alexandra Samuel, who created the RSStocracy guide referenced in the link above, has come up with another nifty idea. Here it is:
This is actually one of several such icons available for your page. One says, for example, RSS: WTF? They all point to the same guide that Samuels has created. She also has some links to additional resources, all bound under one landing page.
It’s a good idea, but there’s no great need to link only to Samuels’ site. You could create an icon to link to any tutorial you like, even one you create yourself. But if we’re going to help people get up to speed, providing a clue to the clueless is a nice touch. Kudos to Samuels for coming up with the idea.