I had to occasion to speak with Tim Bray, XML pioneer and Director of Web Technologies at Sun, in preparation for an article and wanted to share some nuggets from this very bright man. Bray sees RSS as a very broad communications format for information which is received at irregular times, such as magazines or news. In these instances you don't want to waste a lot of time searching to find out whether the information is in, you want to be told when it arrives.
Apropos of this use, he suggest that getting financial information on, say your stocks, credit card transactions are other possible uses of the technology.
In my own experience, some companies are already using RSS to notify customers or partners of a new software rev, a bug fix or security alert. Why not VISA or Merrill Lynch?
"It's too early," says Bray, "to tell where RSS will work better than email, instant messaging or something else. But we know enough to recognize that it will become a major part of the communications spectrum." The possibilities are intriguing.
A good interview with Bray on this topic can be found here.
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