MacAddict and RSS (a pathetic nightmare)

In the latest MacAddict (came today, I’m guessing it is the July edition) there is a “how-to” article for publishing RSS feeds. Of course, being the geek I am, I flipped past the saucy editorials and went directly to the piece on RSS. The only decent bit in the whole thing is the screen shot of NetNewsWire (it featured an appearance by MacMerc).

It never really explained why RSS is handy, how it builds your traffic or really what it even does. It basically just said “here’s how”. Furthermore, it made it sound like the only way to author a feed is by hand! Personally, if you have to do it by hand, I don’t think your site should have a feed. If you are making enough updates to warrent a feed and you still do it by hand, look into installing a CMS.

I could not believe there was a whole article on using TextEdit to write out cryptic XML. I’m sure it impressed no one. At least they didn’t try to tackle RDF :). It also never mentioned the pissing contest that is RSS. Probably a good thing though.

Update: She told readers to use Userland’s validator which is known to be… umm… crap. Use this one. Also as readers have pointed out, MacAddict.com doesn’t even have a feed. Come on.

You can subscribe to this site’s feed which is located here. The benefit is you can read the posts right in your news reader (complete with sexy photos) and can easily see when updates are made.