3 posts tagged “rss”

What websites do you visit every day?
Submitted by Chez Michelle.

Not too many since I discovered RSS:

• Email - Gmail
• RSS Reader - Google Reader
• Calendar - Google Calendar
• Blog - Update Nation
  
  

After that I could list sites I tend to read using my RSS reader or just happen to go to, but the big message for you is that RSS is great and can save you lots of time and energy. Here is the best video explanation I have found:

Every day I scan over hundreds of articles and news items. I have really started liking RSS because it saves me so much time. Before I was using RSS I would:

1. 

   Google Reader
   open each page; I currently follow 40+ feeds
   
2. scan over the news
3. try to figure out if any of it was new to me
4. check each page a couple times a day, if they are the type that would update more then once a day.

Now, all I have to do is to open up my RSS reader, I use Google Reader, and see if there is anything new. I check that page every few hours, or minutes, and can quickly see what is new to me.

In the "old'en days" when the Internet was in it's first "bubble" the big way to get news out to people was though email and email lists. The new way is going to be through RSS. Here are some of the advantages to me, the user, by using RSS:

• They don't have my email address - thus they cannot sell my email address to a spamer.
  
• I know where the message came from - I don't need a spam filter on my RSS feeds.
  
• I have the control - if I am tired of receiving what a organization is sending I can just remove the feed.
• If I don't check it (because of vacation, or I am too busy), then it waits on me
• They can attach other things then just text - the org can send me podcasts, or any other file like a PDF, or video. They only automatically download if you are using a desktop RSS reader, not a webbased one.
  
• They can be password protector - this is a *newer* development, but will probably happen more in the future to allow more personalized RSS feeds.
• It does not have to take up hard drive space & you can check for new, or look at saved updates anyware in the world - if you are using an online service like Google Reader or Bloglines then it is less on your hard drive.

There is one small disadvantage I need to point out, if you are a company or org considering doing this.

RSS can eat up bandwidth. Leo Laporte talked about this in one of his early shows of This Week in Tech. Something about a $23,000 bandwidth bill one month. To help prevent that, there is a company that will host your RSS feed for *free*, called Feedburner. Basically you host your feed at a weird address, and tell them what it is, and they host your feed on their server. They have some neat additional services they will do for you including keeping stats and serving ads, if you want.

Vox offers some RSS feeds, one if for your public posts, and another is for the public posts of your neighborhood. I hope in the future they offer either a unique RSS feed that you can use to see all the Friends & Family posts others have made available to you or a password protected feed to do the same.