Hurrah for Firebox - first with RSS feeds for its press releases
Mucho congrats to Firebox, which is the first company I’ve come across which has a RSS feed* for its press releases. Presently it’s only for the newest items, and is brief text, but thank God for having them at all. This means I’m actually likely to read stuff off Firebox, whereas zillions of press releases sit mouldering in my Gmail account.
(And to all the PR companies sending press releases to my @charlesarthur.com email address, would you please stop it??! As is made clear on the ‘Contact Me’ pages above, you can send them to my Gmail account. I have been replying individually telling people not to - well, those where email can go in as well as out; ITPR.co.uk apparently is an output-only organisation, which tells you all you need to know. But soon I’m just going to start deleting them wholesale - my spam filter spots them and blocks them all ruthlessly.)
Oh yes, the feed URL. It’s http://www.firebox.com/rss.xml. Credit to Charlie Morgan, the feisty PR lady, for making it happen. This is where it begins, everyone. Technology writers use it one year, five years later every hack does. Example: email. Example: the web. Example: Google.
BusinessWire had been going to win this race, as I was assured it would have RSS feeds for particular press releases earlier this week, but I couldn’t find them.
Anyone else doing RSS feeds for press releases in the UK? Love to know. And yes, I’m sure I’ll have lots of aggrieved email and comments saying “But we were first..”
(Style note: a RSS feed or an RSS feed?)
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- OK, let's be truthful: I hate Romeike, and the future of PR is not email (20 February 2005; score: 58.34%)
- What PR people need: RSS feeds (outgoing, mostly) (17 January 2005; score: 55.89%)
- You're seeing this page because your browser is pond life (3 August 2004; score: 53.85%)
![[Valid RSS]](wp-includes/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed"){kind=small}
March 3rd, 2005 at 8:18 am
An RSS feed. Vide ‘an arse’ and, contra, ‘a UFO’.
R
March 3rd, 2005 at 9:30 am
Yes. An arse; a rectum; an rss feed; an unenforceable rule; a UN force.
March 3rd, 2005 at 10:17 am
Not only press releases, but CIE News is intended for press release-like content, and is deliberately kept low traffic.
CIE Thoughts is the feed for the noise… ;-)
Paul
March 3rd, 2005 at 10:44 am
We’ve been doing it for months, Charles - check out http://www.btplc.com/News/RSS/Index.htm.
March 3rd, 2005 at 1:08 pm
The a/an thing before acronyms (I’ve been told) follows the standard grammatical rules, although loosely.
As you probably know, vowels are letters where the sound they make cannot be spelled. Consonants are letters where the sound they make can be spelled. “Bee”, “See”, “Dee”, “Eff”, “Gee”, “Haitch”, “Jay”, “Kay”, “Ell”, “Emm”, “En”, “Pee”, “que”, “arr”, “Ess”, “Tee”, “Vee”, “double-u”,”ex”,”why”,”zed”
I was taught that if the acronym begins with one of the letters where the pronunciation begins with a vowel, then it’s “an” - so an FAQ, an LCD, an RSS feed.
Like I said, that’s what I was taught…
March 8th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
The person from BT may have been “doing it for months”. But as is BT’s wont, it seems to have invented its own format.
I can’t get their RSS feed to work in Newsgator or Firefox.
March 8th, 2005 at 3:15 pm
Hmm, BT’s feed doesn’t seem to update on my newsreader (NetNewsWire) - although the latest item is dated today, it seems to date back ages. Unless BT only has one thing at a time on its RSS feed, which is frankly silly.
March 9th, 2005 at 9:43 am
Charles, I think you certainly need to subscribe to Opera’s Press Release newsfeed at http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/rdf.pl
April 5th, 2005 at 4:17 pm
Re. the BT feed format - just tried this validator and it says all is well.
Looks like regular RSS v2 to me. Something I’m missing?