Sipping Merlot's RSS Feeds
Alan Levine,
CogDogBlog,
Aug 28, 2003
The story of the day is MERLOT's launch of its RSS feeds - 20 in all, featuring new and reviewed resources in nine different subject areas. But the highlight of the day is Alan Levine's scathing criticism of the feeds. He writes, "I've been told numerous times that MERLOT is protective of its meta-data, the crown jewels, the coin of the realm. However, I still have not seen how providing a feed of item titles, content, and a link to a MERLOT item entry URL gives anything away. In fact, it should draw more people into MERLOT. Isn't the content itself much more important than the meta-data? What is this abundant obsession with data about data?CRLFI must be thick headed or just a moonshine lovin' country fool, but I do not get why MERLOT treats their content like Dom Perignon but provides a Boones Farm flavor of RSS. It is offered from a wine steward in a new tuxedo allowing you the honor of sniffing a cork, but the product is more akin to cracking the bottle open on the tailgate of your chevy pickup." I wanted to say the same thing, but I'm far too diplomatic. ;)
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