Archive for the 'google' Category

Coupons via RSS

Tuesday, January 16th, 2007

Saletastic.com has announced a service whereby you can get an RSS feed of coupons from over 130 merchants. You do need to create an account (to manage your options), but you do not need to provide an email address. You can also add the coupons to your Yahoo, MSN, or Google Portal (ig) homepage. Very nice.

Here’s an example feed: http://www.saletastic.com/rss/userrss/test.rss

The RSS 2.0 feed has a couple of minor validation problems (as of this writing), but all-in-all a nice way to go. Since you don’t know until you sign up, here’s an exhaustive list of the merchants who currently provide coupons through the service:

1-800-PetMeds, 123 InkJet, 1800contacts, 1800Flowers, 4inkjets, ABT Electronics, AC Lens, Ace Hardware, Alazing, Alibris, AppetizersToGo, Apple Store, Auto Parts Warehouse, AutoAnything, Avenue, Avon, Bare Necessities, Barnes and Noble, Batteries.com, Best Buy, Blair, Blinds, Blue Nile, Buy com, Catherines, Chadwicks, Cooking, Cutter and Buck, Davids Cookies, dELiA*s, Dell, Dell Small Business, Diamond com, Diamonds International, Dicks Sporting Goods, Discount Office Supply, Discovery Channel Store, Drugstore, Eastbay, EB Games, eBags, eBatts, ELF, Elisabeth, eLuxury, Esprit, eToys, Fannie May Candies, Fashion Bug, Figleaves, Finish Line, Florshiem, fogdog sports, Foot Locker, Forzieri, FragranceNet, Fredericks Of Hollywood, FreshPair, FTD, Gaiam, GameStop, Gevalia, GotFruit, Great Skin, Hickory Farm, HiFi, Highlights, HobbyTron, ICE, Illuminations, International Male, iTunes, J and R, J C Whitney, Jessica London, Joann, JustMySize, , KBToys, Kohls, Lamps Plus, Lane Bryant, Lens.com, Lerner, Lids, Lillian Vernon, Limoges Jewelry, Linens and Things, Luggage Online, macys, Mikasa, Mondera, Mrs Field, Nashbar, Net Magazines, NetFlix, Office Depot, Omaha Steaks, OneHanesPlace, Overstock, Pajagram, Paul Fredrick, Payless Shoes, Perfume Emporium, PetCareRX, PETCO, PetsMart, ProFlowers, Restaurant, Road Runner Sports, Sharper Image, ShoeBuy, Shoes, ShopNBC, ShopPBS, Sierra Trading Post, SmartBargains, Stacy Adams, Szul, Target, textbookx, The Body Shop, The Childrens Place, Things Remembered, TigerDirect, Tower Records, Vermont Teddy Bear, Vision Direct, VitaCost, Walmart, Wine com, World Of Watches, Zales, ZIRH

Sometimes old ideas can still be good ones. Now where’s the coupon for those nose hair trimmers?

Posted in syndication, google, rss, coupons | Comments Off

The Popcorn Button for RSS

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

PopcornMike Sansone did a BlogTalkRadio show this morning (listen here) that talks about how he gets business people up to speed on RSS, feed readers, and general tips for using RSS efficiently.

One point that Mike made is that non-technical people look at feeds like a microwave… they don’t want to know about the neutrons and the power configuration. They want to know which button to push to make popcorn. The real power of the RSS/Atom story isn’t in how it works, but in what it does for you.

This goes back to Greg Reinacker’s comment in 2005 that “RSS is plumbing.” The specification merits of RSS or Atom will only win over the geekerati. Everybody else just wants to know where the popcorn button is.

So how do we make RSS as easy as microwave popcorn? Personally, I don’t see this happening until every email client - desktop and online - has free, robust support for RSS feeds. The biggest barrier I see in my workplace is resistance to “yet another application to monitor.” If feed items show up with their email, suddenly it isn’t so bad. Unfortunately, few email client feed readers are both good AND free. If GMail ever integrated Google Reader, that would be a killer, killer app.

Now where’s that butter?

Posted in syndication, google, rss, atom | 2 Comments »