It's 10 a.m. Do you know how many messages are sitting in your e-mail box and what's happening on your campus, in your state, or in your professional field? So much information, so little time.
You're not alone if you're feeling overwhelmed. Since the web and e-mail started to rule a good part of our work lives, the amount of communication received, digested, and processed in a single day has never been so huge.
With anyone working, studying, or teaching on campus feeling some level of information overload, presidents, senior officers, and other administrators must ensure their messages don't get lost. Multiple campus locations, a wide array of target audiences, limited attention span, and e-mail spam filters add to the challenge.
If only there were an easy way to deliver an institution's news or announcements in real time to the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people who really need this information-and only to them-without having to worry about ISPs or spam software blocking your messages.
Duke Today, a web portal powered by RSS, has feeds of the latest university academic news, plus daily updates on everything from dining menus to IT alerts.
Consider your wish granted. RSS can do just that for you and your institution.
With its orange icon found on many newspaper websites, the techie acronym may ring a bell. Yet, the majority of web users don't know what it stands for, what it does, and how it does that.
RSS Revealed
According to the web encyclopedia Wikipedia, "RSS is a family of web feed formats, specified in XML and used for web syndication. The abbreviation is variously used to refer to the following standards: Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or Real-time Simple Syndication." No matter how many technical standards it stands for, RSS provides an easy way to subscribe to news feed available on websites to receive updates in an RSS reader or aggregator as soon as they are published. As a result, RSS has become what's generally considered the best web content delivery channel for any information publisher, be it a newspaper, a blog, or a university office.
Several factors explain the potential of RSS to become a magic bullet for most institution-wide communication nightmares:
RSS has what it takes to become a mainstream content delivery channel. A 2005 Yahoo white paper, "RSS-Crossing into the Mainstream," included results of a study conducted with Ipsos Insight and based on a sample of 4,038 internet users. The report concludes that, while only 4 percent of people knowingly use RSS, more than one-quarter of internet users enjoy the benefits of RSS without knowing it. These "unaware RSS users" are similar demographically to the average internet user, suggesting that RSS is not just for the tech-savvy few.
Microsoft will support RSS in its new products Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7, which will result in a drastic increase in RSS usage.
RSS should become the most efficient content delivery channel for mobile phones. It can deliver short news alerts in the most basic format (text only), which makes it the perfect solution for any small-screen device in the years to come.
RSS offers a credible alternative to e-mail, as spam filters make it more difficult to deliver mass messages and some internet service providers toy with the idea of a digital stamp.
An increasing number of IHEs have started using RSS for communication.
Feeding Higher Ed
At The College of New Jersey, RSS was silently integrated to the institution's news web application in summer 2004. Last fall, RSS feeds were finally added to the news page and the to-do list on the students' page for this suburban school of more than 6,200 students. "One of the main reasons we initially implemented RSS was to provide feeds to our statewide media outlets. We also received several requests from members of our TCNJ community who were using RSS aggregators," recalls Matthew Winkel, web information architect.
"RSS provides a consistent news source wherever and however our students want to receive it."
-George P. Tsetsekos, Drexel University
After an extensive study of internal communications, Duke University (N.C.) went a step further with Duke Today, a fully customizable news web portal powered by RSS. Launched last spring, it features feeds of the latest Duke news in law, medicine, science, etc. It also includes a section with daily updates on everything from dining menus to computer security alerts.
