In my book, RSS is
the technology of 2005, and before the year closes out I wanted to announce the best application of RSS for 2005.
I've been enjoying the heck out of
Flickr, uploading a few
walkin' the dog pics, creating groups (Vermont, Things in a Row, Catchy Colors...), building a collection of
favorite photos, making contacts and having conversations with new people. And tagging everything in sight.
From a pure technical perspective, Flickr is one of the best web sites anywhere. The sophistication of its UI makes it a real pleasure to use. And speed...golly. I remember a number of photo sharing sites where I lurked in the past just being dogs! (Not to criticize my
Murphy and Sadie doggies, of course.) Then again,
CSGalleries is no slouch with handling photos either. Had to get that in there.
JRSS is baked into almost everything at Flickr. I've been creating feeds for Flickr groups and tagged photos. (
screenshot) It's more efficient to click-through to flickr from the feed header and view the photos
as a collection, but its still a sweet use for RSS.
Okay, on to the Best Application of RSS for 2005. This is it. No one can touch this. I've subscribed to several groups and tags on donuts. DONUTS, DONUTS!!!! So I receive--
and you can, too!--new photos of donuts right into your RSS reader. The photo below from
Concrete Angel is just one of hundreds, THOUSANDS, of donut pictures that can greet you in the morning, or at the top of each hour, or whatever your donut feed cycle happens to be. "Donut Feed Cycle..." Now
that's a weighty concept.
Nothing's perfect, of course. Flickr provides this donuty-sweet function called tag clustering, allowing you to see photos tagged donuts, doughnuts, krispykreme, etc on
a single page, called a cluster. Excellent web page application, but you can't subscribe to a cluster. Yet.
All I know is that it's going to be a fantastic 2006!
Technorati Tags: Flickr, Donuts, RSS