Thing 4: RSS and Newsreaders

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

To me, RSS is like the creation of Wal-Mart. It just makes life simpler having everything you need in one place. No more spending hours searching through all your favorite websites to get the latest news - it's delivered to you. And if the information or site you have subscribed to no longer interests you....unsubscribe. This is great!

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your library or personal life?

I believe the better question here is "How could you NOT use it?" There are certain authors I like to keep up with and various news websites I visit on a fairly regular basis but sometimes I just don't have the time to check for the latest updates on book/movie release details or the latest news and RSS feeds deliver all the information I want to one location so that I can scan through the headlines. Did I mention how great this is?

Which tool for finding feeds was easiest to use?

Since I already had a Google account I went ahead and used Google Reader to subscribe to my feeds. This was extremely easy to do and I can access them from my blog page (too cool!). I can also add new subscriptions by clicking on the "Add a Subscription" button and pasting the URL in.

What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

I'm sure as I play with this more I will find more efficient ways of locating newsfeeds and subscribing to them. I'll keep you posted!