A Newspaper Every Second (RSS)

I first started hearing about RSS (Really Simple Syndication / Insert Acronym Of Choice) during my final years of uni. Back then it was a new technology, under trial by a select few as a means of providing and accessing online content without having to go directly to the source. Having far too many more important things on my mind (thesis, girlfriend & beer) I took little notice thinking it looked too complicated for something an elite few would use. Fast forward to the here and now and I find myself surrounded by RSS feeds from everywhere imaginable. How wrong was I?

Whereby once I would have opened a dozen or more IE windows to read the news from my favourite sites, now I simply fire up an RSS reader and peruse them in one consistently formatted location. Although I have been taking advantage of this new technology for a while now, more recently it has begun to dominate my personal online time. There are now at least 3 ways in which I directly access RSS feeds on a day to day basis: my PDA, Google Reader and via live bookmarks in Firefox.

I'll start with my PDA. The only chance I get to really sit down and read through the latest news is first thing in the morning; over breakfast and during the train ride to work. Using an RSS reader installed on my PDA I download a number of feeds via my home wireless network and read them while offline and on the move. As I don’t have all day to read news feeds, I try and limit the number of items I download to around 100 (Unfortunatly this is rearly the case). I have tried a couple of different Pocket PC based readers in the past, but currently I am using pRSSreader and have found it reliable and well featured.

Once at work the first thing I do is load up Firefox. As mentioned earlier this week, my homepage includes the Google Labs Reader module. I could quite easily load in an excessive number of feeds, however in the interest of productivity (read: avoiding work all day) I have only added two feeds here; Digg for general geek announcements and Techeblog for geeky pretties. The major benefit of using the Google Reader is that I am presented with a updated feeds everytime I open my homepage.

Lastly, Firefox (and most other recent browsers) provides an inbuilt feature known as live bookmarking. By saving a feed as a live bookmark, Firefox is able to display the latest content from each site as it's own link. For my purposes, this means that I can add as many feeds as I want to the browser I am using, and quickly check the latest headlines whenever I get a free moment. I tend not to check these feeds terribly often, but it provides a nice way to catch up with news when those rare free moments arise.

RSS has revolutionised the way in which many net savy folks, including myself, access online content. From a user point of view it makes keeping up with the latest news and information infinently easier and further developments in this technology are inevitable. Personally, I would struggle to return to a life without RSS and feel the pinch evertime I leave my PDA at home. Once I stop this whole post a day caper I will post an OPML list of the feeds I subscribe to, and if in the meantime you have any suggestions for more, feel free to mention them in the comments.

Categories: Web2.0, RSS, News