Everyone is familiar with the concept of email. As discussed in the prior chapter, email is still the most prevalent mode of ezine publication. I promised to tell you another way to accomplish this without email and without subscriber based boundaries. I'll stay as non-technical as possible, because you really don't have to know the nuts and bolts of the technology to benefit from it any more than you have to know how to build a car in order to drive one.

Many of you internet saavy readers are already familiar with RSS feeds. For those who are not familiar with it, here's a straight-forward definition as posted on Webopedia.com:

"Short for RDF Site Summary or Rich Site Summary, an XML format for syndicating Web content. A Web site that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A user that can read RSS-distributed content can use the content on a different site. Syndicated content includes such data as news feeds, events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums or even corporate information. RSS was originally developed by Netscape."

I'll also defer to Webopedia.com for the following, simple definition of the term 'syndication':

"The sharing of content among different Web sites. The term is normally associated with licensed content such as television programs and newspaper columns."

Those are two concepts that make this new form of publication exciting. First, the implication of the term "rich site" is the fact that you can use media-rich content, such as graphics, audio, video and animations. You're not limited to text. Second, the implication of the term syndication is the ease with which the information you publish can be shared with others. In fact, by providing simple snippet of code to other publishers and webmasters, they can post your content to their ezine or website and get automatic updates without any additional effort. Period. That is the powerful part of publishing using RSS feeds.

The only down side to RSS is that the intent is really for posting information, not for two-way communication. There are plenty of channel viewers, which allow the "layperson" to view and read RSS posts. (I highly recommend QuikView by Quikonnex because it is accessible from any internet session using the major browsers (Internet Explorer, NetScape, Mozilla, etc) and you can bookmark any RSS feed or channel using QuikView.) From a publishing perspective, RSS is still in the tech-ese phase, so you have to be fairly technical to exploit the publishing or info sharing benefits of RSS.



That's where Quikonnex comes in. Quikonnex provides a user-friendly publisher interface for formatting individual publisher's space, which is referred to as a channel, for automatically updating common links/information with by changing a single "mini webpage" and for posting new articles or information with a past, present or future timestamp. Quikonnex also provides a couple different modes of two-way communication. First, the comment post capability allows interactivity between the reader community at large and the publisher.

Second, Quik Message to Publisher (QMTP) allows two-way private messaging. The message sender need not be a Quikonnex member, but the recipient, of course, must be a Quikonnex member. Another feature available for now is free one-on-one web conferencing. You will also find in the forum some simple instructions and download files to help you establish the syndication scripts and links for you channel. This allows your channel content to be posted on other websites and channels, where the links are updated every time you submit a new item to your channel.

In addition to these features, Quikonnex provides an extensive community forum, which includes informational and instructional topics as well as instructional videos for key Quikonnex features. During most weekday business hours, live support is provided by the founders and some founding publishers of Quikonnex. You won't get some clueless outsourced support staff member or autoresponder canned answers to your questions.



Finally, twice-weekly publisher forums and regular weekly open training forums provide even more opportunity to learn and to meet with other Quikonnex members through Yahoo! voice chat and COITalk web conferencing.

So, you have email delivery, the Corvair of the publishing world....good but beyond its time, RSS feeds...the DIY kit car version of syndication publishing, or the new Lamborghini with all the benefits of RSS feeds and all the bells and whistles needed to get you up to speed fast and cruising down the internet autobahn in no time!

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