Not long ago I wrote about using enterprise RSS to deliver the right information to lawyers. I’ve since learned of another good use for this technology.
My former colleague Robyn Rebollo is a law librarian. She recently moved from the US to Australia, where she writes the Accidental Aussie blog, which covers resources for US and Australian researchers. In response to my post, Robyn wrote:
“I wanted to comment on your posting concerning RSS feeds. In my prior job, I purchased several copies of Feed Demon [a new aggregator] for both the library and marketing departments to use for business and competitive intelligence tracking purposes. The deployment was a big success and I was able to really get a grip on all my RSS monitoring. Glad that you mentioned the SEC will be offering RSS. There are many government sites out there already doing the same thing.
Let me share with you a good tip on monitoring other law firms and clients. You can track other firm or client press releases, new attorney listings, or product announcements. If a page with regularly updated information does not have a built-in RSS [really simple syndication] feed, you can use the web site Feed Yes to create an RSS feed for one or more pages. That turns out to be a great way to keep track of what firms and clients are doing, especially cases competing law firms were involved in.”
My guess is that in a few years, RSS will be ubiquitous as way to fetch, deliver, and consolidate information. It will be like electricity – something we use all the time but don’t talk about except when it goes out.
Update: (11/8/06) Bloggers Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell wrote a good article on RSS in Law Practice Today; it lists other tools similar to Feed Yes. More generally, it’s a good intro to RSS.