I’m officially addicted to RSS. Let’s start at the beginning here. Most modern day web pages publish articles to their website but simultaneously to a sort of simple version of the site as well which is just the collection of articles. This is their RSS feed. Now knowing that such a page exists, the technology also exists with which you can see when the feed is updated and pull the new article into a reader.
Anyone who peruses their favorite web sites for the newest news can know how silly it might seem to hit refresh every 60 seconds or just randomly browse and hope there might be a new update to the page. However, if you begin to use an RSS reader you realize how great the automation becomes when the reader tells you fairly quickly after a page is updated.
So I started my RSS journey with the Sage plugin for Firefox. Instead of opening up every single page I read and hoping to read the new news, I simply told Sage which feeds to check and I’d hit one button and it would give me the list of news. The downside to this method is that I have to set it up for every computer I use which is very cumbersome. Overall, this is a much faster way to read and digest new articles of news.
But then one day I find out Google has an RSS reader as well. After setting up my feeds in Sage for the 983792857th time, I was hesitant to start again. However, I decided if I set it up on Google I’d never have to set it up again because it’s based on the web, which is one of the HUGE plusses. So I went and made the dive.
There are levels of effeciency that come into play when dealing with this sort of stuff that are probably beyond my set of knowledge. But the switch to Google Reader has been, what I feel like, an incredible boost in keeping up with current events. I’ve moved from 20 feeds to 49 feeds because I feel like Google does a much better job at keeping me up to date, yet I’m maintaining relatively the same amount of time to read them. I think even though there’s more to read, I filter out quite a bit and read maybe 1 out of 20 articles. You’ll find that some feeds have higher quality reads but low volume or vice versa. There’s this obsession now to want more and more, but I’ll probably reach a limit of feeds that I can’t keep up with.
One of the cooler parts of Google Reader is now evidenced on my sidebar. I can actually share stories I find interesting with the click of a button so you can sort of keep up with what I keep up with. Additionally there’s a specific link for my stuff located at: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/15227217337039956264
So at this point, I try to advocate the sort of switch from aimless browser refreshing to a more reliable way of keeping up via RSS. It definately clicks with some people, but with others I think it might be too foreign. For those in the too foreign camp I imagine they don’t utilize the web as a sort of informational overload, but more as a passing recreation which is why the obsession to be kept up to date isn’t keyed in for them. Either way, it’s worth checking out.
My tip for you, I use Chrome set with reader as my homepage. This goes along with the multibrowser thing I detailed below in the Chrome post. I find quirky things to use individual browsers for.
Thanks HAMMERON!
