They're taking over the Internet... slowly but surely.

Look out! Here's another one   

But what are they? Well... clicking on one may not reveal much, but the "little orange buttons" are our friends and they're here to stay.

They go by a lot of "techy" names, like RSS, ATOM and "Attention", but basically they give your customers a web address that can be integrated into their desktop, or other applications.

In the case of i-Dialogue Customer Portal, they keep your customers attention by streaming your portals activities right into their applications, like Microsoft Outlook, Google News Reader, or Internet Explorer.

Imagine your customers seeing headlines from your web site like "New Product Release from XYZ Corp Hits the Market" right next to their Inbox?

Blog entries, message boards, knowledge base articles (from Salesforce.com Solutions), and new web pages.... they're all combined into one feed.

So go ahead...click on one . They won't bite

But before you do, check out a few of these fine RSS readers. In fact, you may consider bundling the announcement of your portals RSS feed with the ability to download any of these readers:

Attensa: Great for organizing feeds in Outlook.
Bloglines : The leading online, hosted RSS feed aggregator.
Newsgater: Offers both installed and online readers.
Feed rinse: Clever web site that filters feeds before they get to your reader.