Hugh MacLeod has 41 great notes on blogging (via Martin Stabe). I was particularly taken by this:

40. When people ask me what the future of media is, I always answer, “RSS”. Thank you, Winer & Co. Seriously.

Well, thank you MacLeod. Just looking at the practical side of it: I read so many different news outlets, blogs & MSM, that RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is invaluable to me, without it I'd spend hours just 'walking' between websites several times a day. And no, offering me a subscription to breaking news or newsletters sent directly to my email doesn't do anything for me; I know the allure of data capture and all of that, but I don't want my email box spammed with newsletters and breaking news of which 70pc is irrelevant to me. Not providing RSS leaves a serious dent in a newspaper's credibility.

To my delight, I just discovered a RSS feed for DN, my favourite Norwegian paper, but so far it only seems to bring one day old news. Due to the security settings on my laptop I haven't been able to look behind its subscription walls yet, but the subscription department told me I would only find a Pdf version there, which frankly is pretty useless to me. I just want to skim the headlines in my favourite sections and read the stories I'm interested in, quick and easy please...

Börsen, the Danish financial daily, is another annoying RSS experience: at first I only found one RSS feed – all the newspaper's output or none - but on closer inspection I later found a few more, just not a feed for my favourite section (media market).

Update 16/1: No, I dont agree with all of MacLeod's notes, I certainly don't have a lot of time on my hands - that's why I shied away from blogging until about this time last year, but there are many gems among them. Jackie Danicki has picked out a few other of my favourite notes here.