Mar 18, 2008
RSS Really sensational stuff
I posted a bit about RSS quite recently, but after further discussion in class I thought I might add a few more points.
As i mentioned in may last post, I became hopelessly addicted. As RSS is now available on nearly every site that updates regularly, I was subscribing with abandon, and quickly discovered that trawling through my daily feeds (some of which can be quite lengthy with media enclosures) was actually wasting a lot of my time rather than saving time, which is the primary function of really simple syndication.
I have since learnt to curb my addiction, and am involved in a pleasant relationship with netnewswire, my computer-based feed reader installed at home. I have also just recently signed up for google reader, as I would like to be able to refer to feeds while at school also. Both have handy features, like telling you how many feeds you have read etc, allowing you to keep great (pointless but interesting) tabs on your daily media consumption.
More interesting, however, was Adrian’s discussion about RSS feeds as an invaluable research tool. By customising a feed through a website such as delicious, I can use RSS to provide me with information that is focussed on a particular topic. Currently I am presenting a project on the topic of technology consumption on Japan, and I am going to use this method to see how much information I can get and how useful it is…
It might need some refining, and I might need to be more specific in my requests, but this makes researching incredibly efficient, especially when used to obtain info on incredibly dynamic subjects (note example of Britney Spears – the action never stops…)
Meanwhile, I have added a few other student blogs to my feeds, and here is a snapshot of what is currently going on, to distract you from the drone of my typing.
