Presenting Structured, RSS-Fed New Media Streams Within A Portable Media Player: A Category Or Source Organizational Decision

by Bryant, Travis Joseph

The RSS protocol allows, among other uses, for portable media player devices to download files automatically from the internet. Although text RSS feed on portable media devices is currently limited, it is possible that text feeds will become a ubiquitous feature on future PDA/media crossover devices. With the increasing usage of video-enabled portable media players, video content on these devices will also gain strength in the consumer market. Through qualitative interviews this pilot study hopes to investigate usage of new media streams on portable devices, with additional focus on RSS feeds, content categorization and interface category customization. Do users prefer to display their content and RSS feeds by a descriptive category, or by the website from which the feed was retrieved? In this study we hope to gain insight into which style users prefer, if any.