You’ve heard of RSS? You’ve seen those small funny tags on websites? You’ve heard co-workers and acquaintances swear by it, but still have no idea what RSS is? Well don’t worry, according to a recent survey you’re still in the majority, but this is changing rapidly. In the information world, RSS is not only revolutionalizing the way news, media and content creators share information, but it also is swiftly changing the way everyday users are consuming information.
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a file format for delivering regularly updated information over the web.
Just think about the websites and news information sources you visit every day. It takes time to visit those sites and scour the ad-filled and image-heavy pages for just the text you want to read, doesn’t it? Now imagine if you could visit all those information sources and web pages in just one place and all at the same time … without being bombarded with advertising… without having to search for new information on the page you’d already seen or read before… and without having to consume a lot of time visiting each site individually. Would that be valuable to you? Well, it’s available now through a newsreader and RSS.
This week’s discovery exercises focus on learning about RSS news feeds and setting up a Bloglines account (a free online newsreader) for yourself to bring your feeds together.
Discovery Resources:
CNET Video: RSS 411 - a good over view of what RSS is and the benefits to users.Using Bloglines Tutorial (how to keep up with dozens of blogs everyday) – This online tutorial walks you through how to setup a Bloglines account and add newsfeeds. Follow Steps 1 to 3 to set up your Bloglines account. Steps 4 – 9 are optional and cover how to subscribe to different types of feeds (podcasts, Flickr albums, etc)
Adding RSS Feeds to Bloglines - A short YouTube video created by Helen Blowers of PLCMC showing how to add feeds.
Additional Bloglines news feed subcription information (screenshot image)
Discovery Exercise:
1. Follow the discovery resources above to learn more about RSS and newsreaders.2. Create a free online Bloglines account for yourself and subscribe to at least 10 newsfeeds to your reader. See Using Bloglines Tutorial steps 1-3 for instructions. Now that you have a newsreader (your Bloglines account), you can begin adding other newsfeeds that interest you. There are several ways you can locate newsfeeds:
- When visiting your favorite websites -- look for news feed icons that indicate the website provide Often a feed icon will be displayed somewhere in the navigation bar of the site.
- Here's an image that contains a sampling of several feed icons.
- Use Blogline's Search tool - Bloglines recently expanded search tool lets you search for news feeds in addition to posts, citations and the web. Use the Search for Feeds option to locate RSS feeds you might be interested in.
- Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlet RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.
- Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
- Technorati - Technorati is a popular blog finding tool that lets you search for blogs. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging tools, Technorati Blog Search can help you find RSS feeds for topic specific blogs you may be interested in. Additonal Resource: Technorati Tutorial on finding and adding your blog
- What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
- How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?
- How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
- Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?
- Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing?
- What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?
- What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?
