Because I pander to the masses and crave acceptance due to what my psychiatrist only terms as low-self esteem, let's talk hot "technologies." I'll compare, contrast and combine those buzz words du jour, Ajax and RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) got
headlines recently when RSS Investors, of Cambridge, Mass., made an investment into a
company to further develop its RSS aggregation technology. And, Ajax, you well know, if you read this blog, has developed a somewhat cult following among web developers for its ability to increase performance of web applications. However, in my estimation, both RSS and Ajax are rarely used effectively. So, ever the Ubergeeks and prone to think tank-like meetings (AKA Slackers Conventions), the Fueled Development Team brainstormed some uses for RSS that:
- To our Knowledge, have not yet been done or used extensively
- Are completely outside the realm of news feeds (i.e. non traditional uses of the RSS technology)
- Have a functional use in the current Internet environment for either consumers or businesses
- Can be developed to utilize Ajax
- Can be developed to not compromise security (i.e. keeps the identity of the reader anonymous/secure) regardless of the level of personalization
Now, these are not all of our ideas; as I believe that like poison, our brilliance and ingenuity should be doled out in small manageable doses. So, here are the first three the ideas, I'd like to see someone develop soon:
Online Auctioneer's Purchase Tracking Tool
Wide Angle View:
Online auctioneers, especially those with large product offerings and volume sales must keep track of purchase status. You may have already asked yourself, "How does an eBayer track their auctions and purchases?" The answer is somewhat simple: a server script goes out to eBay, performing a search for auctions by Jonny. Now the purchases query can be the tricky part. Do we ask for their user/login info to grab the auctions they are bidding on? That can certainly be a way, but why not simply have them tell you what auctions they are interested in. That way, they don't have to be involved in the auction, but can still monitor it from anywhere their reader goes in a glance. I can see a point where there are two floating divs; one contains their auctions, the other their monitored items. This would remove a bit of screen clutter. I'd also use a different background coloring to denote the difference too, so even at a distance they can tell which view is what. Only a small amount of information really need be shown with these feeds, too. Along with performing the initial pull, Ajax can easily be used to keep the divs updated.
Production Status Notification to Customers of Product Purchases/Orders
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Manufacturers of stock, custom, near custom or personalized products, parts and/or components can keep their customers nearly live on the exact status of a job. This may or may not be what a manufacturer wants to show someone, but I can pretty much guarantee, a customer would love the feedback afforded by live information they can fetch easily and safely. A robot on the production floor could make a note within the system that it's working on customer XYZ's part 74, which in turn would move the percentage done mark to 81.2%. Now that's a holistic view of the situation, but more information should be available and in fact sent. The percentage completion may be an entry in the channel, or it could be a construct of the reader if on a webpage, maybe. The nice part is, a customer can choose the level of detail they want to know about the status, even if that is a delay, at least they know where it is and why.
Example: when I designed and purchased my Dell Laptop last year, I could log into a website and see where it was in the production process and when it shipped. Take that idea and convert it into RSS technology and you've got a functional technology that businesses would use.
Live Gaming Scoreboard
Wide Angle View:
A lot of us, the public, follow some form of sport, whether accepted as a "real" sport or not or just online entertainment, we love our games. Be they virtual or physical, we want to know the standings. Using RSS, a high school football team could track their opponents' track records in a live, intuitive manner. Why not get a small hand at learning the competition's weaknesses and strengths? Make the most of their training time. Obviously, another use would be for online gamers to track their scores and those of their opponents. This concept could be expanded to notify the users when and by whom their last highest score was beat.
Alright, alright, my footnote on security
Because RSS is new and I have seen far too many shoddy implementations of relatively simple stuff, I feel compelled to harp on security. Security, or rather, anonymity of users is crucial in all this. A tool that delivers any of these will need to carefully scavenge information that's personally linked if sensitive. Even the unique identifier used to access the personalized feeds should be wholly unique, with no correlations to the user by derivatives or otherwise.
And the obligatory Fueled warning on not to overuse Ajax
Be careful to not overly Ajax it up too. Provide feedback as much as possible and avoid unnecessary transmissions. Remember, you want the application to be responsive. You may even need to incorporate a bit of animation to distract a user from a larger loading process. Hey, you crazy animation junkie- that doesn't mean one that chronicles the entire
Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I'm talking something intuitive, fast and functional- like a status bar.
Tune in next week for more fun RSS uses.
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