Practical 6a

The topic that we have selected for the case study assignment 2:

Discuss the developments and trends in the area of RSS/podcasting.

The keywords that we have used are:

Keywords: developments, trends, Area, RSS, podcasting
Keywords Variations: advancement, growth, impact.

Search phrase that are used:

Advancements of RSS, Growth and impact of podcasting.


Resource that i have found:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-rss20/

• Purpose

The aim of this website is to promote the company’s product and the intended audiences are all consumers who are interested or want to know more about the company’s product. As the main website for this article is IBM, they values dedication to every client’s success and emphasize on trusts and responsibility between them and other clients and companies.

• Coverage

This websites covers the definition of RSS, how it works, how to find the different types of RSS and even how to customize the channels of RSS.

For a green-horn like me being introduced to something new, the explanation and contents of this website widen my knowledge on RSS and is pretty much easy to understand as it touch on not only the basic of RSS and also the detailed form of the RSS files.

This website also teaches us how to find RSS and new changes that will happen in the future.

A look at one of the links will link us to another RSS website. Therefore, the links that are provided allows us to enhance more about the understanding of RSS. Some links that I have explored teaches a more in-depth knowledge on RSS which is beneficial and very useful to someone like me who is very interested in RSS after reading all the related articles.

• Authority

The author of this website is James Lewin and is the president and owner of The Lewin Group. He has written widely on e-commence business and the Web. Since he has been in the cyber business for from 1995, he should have some knowledge on the RSS. His reputation can be verified as he leaves his contact email in the article.

• Accuracy

After reading on this article, it gives a factual information on RSS and does not propagandise on any political, ideological information. No form of biasness is detected as it only tells the viewers the uses and functionality of RSS. The article is professionally written with no spelling or grammatical mistakes.

• Currency

This article is not very accuracy as it has not been updated for quite some time. It was created in late 2003. But this article tells us on the RSS version 2.0 and is giving us the information on one of the first version of the RSS.

• Accessibility

As the website is mainly used for consumers’ purposes, therefore, no logins are needed and all information in the website can be viewed for free. As the website is linked to the IBM company, there are copyright ownership from IBM. From the first time I have used till now, the site is always available and is stable. There are many text-based explanations with a couple of graphical images used for description.

• Presentation & Arrangement

The article is very well-arranged and presented. It starts off with the introduction and definition of the RSS followed by how we can find RSS feeds, the latest build in RSS, the form of RSS file, then the summary and lastly the information of the author. Although there are not many attention catching images or decoration, it is mainly for people who are interested in RSS. It is like a common website which has the ‘Home’, ‘Products’, etc. on the top left hand of the page.

• Usability

It is relatively easy to use as it only requires scrolling up and down the page. All the information is on a page and other links are at the bottom of the page if I need to gather more information.

• Overall

My overall impression of the website and the article is that I felt it has detailed text-based information for users who wants to gather a lot of knowledge on RSS. There are not many images and therefore we need to understand based on the text and some readers may feel bored and not interested in this article. But those who read and understand the article will have a more in-depth knowledge on RSS.