Steve Rubel has a list of links that show 35 ways you can use RSS. (Lots of people have blogged about this, but I wrote this a day or so ago.) The last item on the list has to be my fave, it being self-referential. And I've just finished subscribing to the "read Da Vinci's notebooks one page at a time" feed. Brian Clark has an interesting response to Steve's list. He also adds his feelings regarding the name "RSS" and whether we should be using it if we expect widespread adoption of web feeds in the future.

Andy Patrizio of Internet News recently wrote a very revealing article about the future of RSS, which includes interview input from Tim Bray, co-author of the XML file specification. This is a must-read article. Even an RSS evangelist like myself didn't know some of the details revealed there. [Found via Nicholas Carlson's Can Publishers Survive in an RSS Age?]

In Patrizio's article, Tim Bray points out that a killer app will be web publishing from a cellphone, in particular photographs. There are in fact a few sites that already allow this. I would throw audio publishing into the app list. But writing text from a PDA is not something I'd want to do on a regular basis. I've tried it, and it is not an experience I want to repeat at present.

In Nicholas Carlson's article, which links to Patrizio's, he mentions that print publishers' websites are "atomizing" their content, breaking up  their content "into little chunks that folks can subscribe to."

In light of that, it makes sense that sites like Newsday, which I profiled the other day, would offer multiple feeds. I still think it would be worthwhile also having 2 or 3 umbrella feeds instead of just several dozen section feeds. This could be done for a subscription fee.

For example, New Scientist has several category feeds to subscribe to. However, some of them are partial-text feeds, and clicking on the "more" link takes you to a page that tells you can access the full-text if you subscribe, or even pay for that issue ($4.95), which gives you access to all the articles.

Newspapers like Canada's Globe and Mail, have a different approach to helping readers subscribe to RSS feeds. It's quite nice really, and despite the numerous feeds, does not seem so overwhelming. But they, too, do not have umbrella feeds.

Unfortunately, the feed that I tried has item summaries that are maybe one sentence. Clicking on a link takes you either to a full-text article, or a partial-text one asking you to register for free. (Depends on the article.) It'd be nice to get a bit more summary text in the feeds.

Also unfortunate, the Globe and Mail hides their RSS link at the very bottom of their page, as if they are ashamed of an extra toe. Why do such a nice job on the webscription page, only to hide the link?