Week 4 - RSS Feeds

I am not a teacher but an awakener. - Robert Frost

Prior to this “thing”, I had discovered Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and started using them for personal use. Like most people, I wanted breaking news sent to me. I had also put a feed into the web portal. I was to soon find out how valuable feeds were. On April 4th (Easter), I was sitting at my computer working on ELIB assignments when the Baja earthquake struck. There was strong rolling, but no loss of power. I had added the United States Geological Survey (USGS) feed awhile back. I was notified instantaneously and knew the magnitude before the television media. Seeing it work so efficiently, my interest in RSS soared and consequently, I began to subscribe to sites to use for everything!

In this assignment (thing 8), I set up the RSS feed in Google Reader. Was I ever impressed! In Google Reader, you can just add a subscription just like a search and you will get links to choose from. This is good if you are just building your sources. If you are already on the web, you can add feeds by the orange button in the tool bar.

As for Library Blogs, I found using the Google Blog Search to be the most convenient since many of the tools I use link to Google (Blogspot, Reader, G-mail, etc). The most impressive feature for me was the ability to see all subscriptions, blogs and feeds, on one screen. Very practical! In the last few weeks, I have become an enthusiastic user of Google apps. I just wish I had money to buy Google stock (LOL)!