| page 2 and final page -- RSS Feed Use By Accountants and Accouting Departments previous page IV. Other RSS Feeds On the 160 Content Pages. Besides the Google News and government agency feeds, discussed above, which appear on the MAIC's 160 content pages, about 100 feeds from other organizations also appear. The following is a list of the subjects of some of the feeds. Source organizations for some of these feeds are also provided. Bank information: Finance Tech; Bank of India; Compliance Headquarters: and Bankinfosecurity.com Economics data and statistics: US Chamber of Commerce and the National Bureau of Economic Research Insurance and risk management: Bettermanagement.com; Riskythinking.com (United Kingdom); and Insurancejournal.com Export and import trade: International Chamber of Commerce; McKinsey.com; CanadianBusiness.com; and Japan Herald News Legal information: Law.com and International Chamber of Commerce Management principles: Bettermanagement.com; Reformingprojectmanagement.com; Knowledgebusiness.com; and Managementissues.com (United Kingdom) Accounting and business news: Florida Certified Public Accountant Society; CFO.com; Deloitte; Harvard Business School Working Knowledge; and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Accounting standards information: Florida Certified Public Accountant Society; Bragg’s blog; and AllBusiness.com. Tax information: Florida Certified Public Accountant Society; Minnesota Certified Public Accountant Society; Yahoo RSS news on tax; Stateline.org; and tax-news.com V. Conclusions. 1. RSS feeds are a valuable additional source of information. At the present time, a total of 435 RSS feeds appear on the MAIC 160 content pages. Each feed contains five links to articles, websites, etc. that contain potentially relevant information to the content page’s content. Therefore, a total of 2,175 (5 x 435) additional links to information is available on the 160 content pages because of these feeds The result, from a perspective of increasing the quality, availability, and uniqueness of information on the content pages, is, in my opinion, good. Based on my evaluation, a relatively good percentage of delivered, and frequently updated, articles are relevant to the content pages' content. For example, recently, approximately 70% of the “fed” links seem interesting to me and relevant to the content of the content pages. And RSS feed technology is a process that proactively delivers unfolding, developing information related to the content selected by the user of that information. Therefore, I do think RSS feeds are a valuable additional source of information to the MAIC. 2. RSS feeds should be useful to accounting departments. The conclusion reached in V1. above, I think, suggests that RSS feeds should be useful as a part of an information management strategy used by accounting departments to have efficient and effective access to day-to-day and strategicly-related needed information on the Internet. For example, if you go to this MAIC content page, http://www.informationforaccountants.com/taxationsites1a.html, on the subject of federal taxes (use your browser’s “back” button to return to this article), you will find feeds from the Florida and Minnesota Societies of Certified Public Accountants, feeding tax-related information. Also, the two Google News feeds, contain continuing updated information on business taxes and the costs of company taxes. This page is an example of a strategy that an accounting department might use to manage the needed information that the Internet can deliver to the department to support the department in its task performance and decision-making needs. A page, like the one linked to above, can be created by the department and made available to personnel. Other pages can deal with other topics for which the department can benefit, for example, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and employment compliance. These pages can provide quick access to information needed by the department at sites on the Internet and in RSS feeds. The Yahoo ads that appear on this linked page, in a sense, serve a similar purpose to the RSS feeds, also appearing on the page. The Yahoo ads are continually updated, based on various factors, including the ads’ relevance to the page’s content. Just as RSS feeds can lead to useful information, information at a website that an ad leads to can be useful. You will also see on the federal tax page links to various websites with information related to federal taxes. The accounting department can place such links to any website that the department wants to quickly access for needed information. Many of the news feeds, and some of the websites linked to, can be a source for longer-ranged, and strategically focused information. RSS feeds are potentially very useful for such a strategic purpose, because once set up, the feeds can very efficiently and effectively update the user with articles and other information originating from knowledgeable authors who are thinking in the articles about long-range issues. 3. Being a current user of RSS feeds could help in more quickly adopting to expected changes in RSS feed uses. The use of the Internet has dramatically improved as users, with needs, and developers with good ideas responded. This continues. The Internet and websites offer more useful applications and improvements, compared to only a few years ago. Just as with the Internet, the ways in which RSS feeds are used and their usefulness, too, are likely to be dramatically changed and improved upon, and probably in a relatively short time. My decision to develop the ability to pull in RSS feeds to the 160 content pages at the MAIC has resulted, I think, in my greatly increased, but still very limited, understanding of this technology. I now consider myself to be somewhat of a RSS feed user, and probably am more able to recognize and exploit RSS feed developments, when such developments are useful to my goals. please click here to return to the Management Accounting Information Center (MAIC)'s homepage please click here to send an email with comments on this article or a suggestion for a topic for another article |