I just got off a flight to Pittsburgh and had the distinct pleasure of flying next to Bil Herd. For those who don’t know his name, Bil was one of the key guys during the infamous Commodore computer days. I met Bil years ago at CES in Vegas when Commodore was on top. When I met Bil, it was just after he strolled by the Atari booth and was offered a job on the spot! He didn’t take it, but it sure made for a fun evening talking about the offer and working for Jack Trameil again.

I was heading to Oakmont for the US Open, and Bil was heading to a technology conference where his work at Commodore was being recognized. We immediately reconnected and proceeded to spend a few hours on the plane catching up. Bil stil has his can do attitude and priceless sense of humor.

We were both on our laptops catching up on RSS news feeds when he asked me what I thought of the new CNN site. I commented that while I got my news from CNN, it came in through CNN’s RSS feed into my desktop so I rarely go to CNN’s site.

For those who aren’t familiar, RSS stands for Really Simple Sysndication and it’s a standard format for posting news feeds. My blog even has one that you can subscribe to! I don’t make any revenue from people visiting the site, so RSS is a great way to keep people in touch with the site.

For those who are making revenue off the site, an improperly crafted RSS feed can lead to the disappearance of your most loyal fans. As people fall in love with your site, users with RSS readers will add your RSS feed to get constant updates. Putting all of the content out on the RSS feed gives your top visitors little reason to actually visit your site.

While I strongly advocate adding RSS to your regularly changing content, I do recommend that you consider using it as teaser copy rather than total replication of your site. Put enough in the feed to fuel interest, but not enough to quench it.

Bil and I ended up spending the afternoon in an airport Starbucks trading stories of the good old days. He shared a nifty story about Commodore’s Amiga team having a fictitious person named ‘Joe Pillow’ who’s legend grew so great that he ended up being listed as a member of the development team. I just couldn’t imagine how much fun they must have had with this fictitious identity.

tiger is up there somewhere

We spent so much time that I was late getting to the Tiger Woods news conference and had to stand all the way in the back. Oakmont looks to be up to typical U.S. Open style and I’m excited to see some golf!