MasterNewMedia.org has a great article today on using RSS to deliver software updates to existing customers/users. Well, you can always count on Robin and his team to get leading-edge news and developements from the new media world, and this is certainly one of them.

While I have already written about this in "Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS", the "thing" finally got a name: Appcasting, as it was named by Fraser Speirs.

What is Appcasting? Appcasting is the practice of using the 'enclosure' feature of RSS 2.0 feeds to deliver updates and release notes for new software applications. The name Appcasting is by analogy with Podcasting, which is the practice of delivering audio files as RSS 2.0 enclosures.

The idea is this: the developer publishes an RSS 2.0 feed, each item of which describes a new release of a particular software product. The items' descriptions may contain release notes or other information about what's new in this release.

How does Appcasting help the users?
When your users are using RSS aggregators which support the RSS 2.0 enclosure feature, it becomes trivial for them to keep up to date with your software releases. Aggregators such as NetNewsWire 2 support downloading of enclosed content right in the aggregator.

How do I set up an Appcast Feed?
It's easy. There's really nothing technologically new here beyond RSS 2.0 itself. All you have to do is create your feed and in each item include a line like:

In the example, the url attribute is the direct download URL for your app, length is the length of the file in bytes and type is the file's MIME type.

Sounds complicated? It really isn't ...

The premise of appcasting is simple: give your customers/users an easy way to receive and download new software updates, patches etc. for your software, without forcing them to keep a constant eye on your web site to see if there's anything new.

Basically a customer service RSS application, which proves just how valuable RSS can become for customer relationship management activities and strategies.