RSS Feeds: Way Too Sexy

My company has banned RSS feeds from all our company media and web sites. To my company, “RSS feed” sounds like “web 2.0″, which sounds like “social media”, which, if accepted, will most assuredly usher in an era of interns posting pictures of their boobs on their company SharePoint profiles.

In their quaking fear, my company has not yet noticed the true power of RSS feeds, which lies in a company’s ability to publish their own announcements to several company web sites or technologies. They think that RSS feeds will be used to stream Reuter’s news — and oh, the scandal. Someone could read a story on Obama’s choice of breakfast drink on our company web site, think we wrote it, and sue us for, uh, talking about the wrong stuff.

I’d like to take a moment to point out that in my former blog, Terrifying Tales from Tech Support, my blog-complaints about stupid, tech-unsavvy users were aimed at young, non-IT-majoring college students. Today my stupid, tech-unsavvy users are IT “professionals” who have worked at my company for years. I’m almost sorry I complained about those poor little philosophy majors, because at least they had the good sense not to enter a career in IT if they didn’t know what a URL is. And in retrospect I think those kids were more tech-savvy than my co-workers.

The following conversations occurred at a recent website redesign meeting. As usual, all the participants are IT people.

Random Asshole Number One: Hey, you know what would be cool? If we had an RSS Feed of our announcements at the top of this site.

Me: Our announcements? What announcements?

My Boss’s Boss: RSS feeds are banned, but I might be able to get them unbanned for this situation if there’s a business need.

Me: But — first things first, what announcements would we be feeding –

Random Asshole Number Two: AN RSS FEED WOULD BE AMAZING!

Me: But, an RSS feed from — ?

Random Asshole Number Three: Holy Crap, an RSS FEED? What an INCREDIBLE IDEA!

Me: But –

Several Random Assholes Chanting Together: RSS FEED! RSS FEED! IT’S WHAT WE NEED! IT WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL THING!

Me: Ok, but, what announcements would we be feeding?

RA1: Our announcements about outages and stuff.

Me: But those aren’t anywhere to feed from –

RA2: We’d type them in.

RA3: Yes we’d type them in.

Me: So… we’d type them into this site, and then they’d show up on this site, where we typed them?

Everyone: Yes! RSS Feeds! RSS Feeds!

Me: Ok, but that’s not an RSS feed.

RA1: Well, it is if it’s scrolling.

RA2: Yes, that’s what we meant. We want it to scroll.

RA3: Yes, scrolling. That’s what RSS feed means right?

MBB: Right. It means something that scrolls.

Me: Oh, ok. Everyone here thinks that “RSS Feed” = “Thing that scrolls”.

Also, everyone here thinks that “Thing that scrolls” is the hottest thing to hit the World Wide Web since spinning teddy-bear shaped navigation buttons.

That’s good.

What’s a Web Site?

Today I received an email from a woman in her 50s who has worked in IT at our company for over 20 years. In the email she said that she wanted a link to “IT Documentation” in an existing links list on our IT Portal, and under that she wanted “Change Management Documents” and about twenty other words which are meaningless to me. So I shot her back an email that said “I’m not really sure what you’re asking for here. If these are links, please send me the URLs.”

She caught me hurrying along in the hall later and stopped me, asking “What is it you need to know about my request?” The following conversation ensued.

Me: I need to know the URLs to those links you wanted posted.

Her: What do you mean?

Me: The URLs. The addresses.

Her: I’m not sure I’m following you.

Me: What is this stuff you want posted? Are these links?

Her: Well, the idea is to give visitors one central location to access documents related to [slow hum of lengthy explanation about business purpose of shit I could care less about... hum... hum...]

Me: I don’t know where that stuff is, and I need to know that, if you expect me to create links to it.

Her: What stuff?

Me: I don’t know… Change Management Docs, any of it, all of it. I don’t know where it is, you have to tell me.

Her: I guess I’m not following you.

Me: What is it exactly that you’re asking for?

Her: Do you want me to send you some screen shots?

Me: Are they screen shots of browser windows with an address bar at the top with an address in it?

Her: Uh…

Me: Sure, send me the screen shots.

Her: [More rambling which illuminates the fact that she only wants one link on our portal, to an existing site that I happen to know about, and the rest of the stuff on THAT site.]

Me: OH. You just want one link, out to IT Documentation. And then the rest of your stuff will be on that site?

Her: I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “site”.

Me: Forget it. I’ll put a link out to Greg’s site, but you’ll have to talk to Greg about posting that other stuff on his site.

Her: Are you sure? I don’t know if he knows how.

Me: I don’t give a flying fuck whether he knows how or not, that seems to be your problem, and possibly his. BUH BYE.