Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has some advice for email newsletter publishers: skip the intros and skip the geek lingo (among 165 other tips). Subscribers are scanners, not readers, still prefer email to RSS, and are quick to dump you for a competitor.
The Machine Readable Web
The vast majority of the Web is intended for human readers. The goal has been to create an online experience for human beings. It is an open and ever growing body of information.