I am wondering lately about uses of RSS different than just news/blogfeed aggregation. I use RSS for:
- checking my agenda: I export a RSS file from my calendar.
- listing my research bibliography (exported from bibDesk)
- get weather forecast (taken from anti-mega)
- check technorati watchlists
- keep serious to-do lists
It's not that much. I tried to gather some RSS tricks and fell across this:
- Chris Heathcote provided his blog readers with a html formular that pushesthe message into his RSS reader.
- Danny O'Brien interviewed by Life Hacker talked about an RSS feed generator; "It’s tricky, but not impossible, to create an easy-to-use UI that would let you mark bits of a web page, and have those turn into the titles and items of an RSS feed. When new items appear, the app would attempt to spot them and fit them into the same template. It might get it wrong, but with more training it would get to the point where the RSS feed would work correctly (until someone redesigned the original Webpage). I picked this out as something important, because RSS readers are turning into the place where people keep broadcast announcements. Sysadmins don’t send out log messages any more, and people are running fewer announce-only mailing lists. You stick it in your RSS feed. (...) but what’s important here is that people shouldn’t have to depend on vendors for RSS feeds. You should be able to turn anything into an RSS feed - and share that template with the world."