Well this assignment took me to a bunch of places I probably didn’t need to go. Now that I’m finished I have two new toolbars at the top of my browser and I’m connected to two (or maybe even 3… I’m not sure exatly) RSS readers. I guess I was a little over zealous in checking these things out. The first feed reader I set up was Sage. I prefer using FireFox over Explorer so it was a natural choice. It was extremely easy to set up and I like the interface, but when I tried using it to get an RSS feed from the Times Argus and the Burlington Freepress it didn’t seem to work. So instead of spending the five minutes or so it would take to figure out why, I decided to download the Google Reader. I didn’t really need to do that because after getting distracted and coming back to the lesson the next day I discovered that when you’re setting up a feed, you don’t necessarily have to choose from the list the page your trying to make a feed from offers you. Sage has a handy little icon for adding pages to your Sage reader while most sites list the Google reader as a choice from their page.
I definitely got into the novelty of creating feeds, and probably got a little slap happy with it, but despite the fun I had I can’t really justify saying that it’s particularly useful. Too many feeds are just too much at once… what’s the point? I visit the sites I’d really want a feed for often enough to not really need something telling me about every little update on the site. And there are so many sites that I don’t visit frequently that if I were to create a feed for them all it would be far too much to sort through as updates come in. Perhaps creating a few feeds for sites you want to get to know better would be a good idea, as long as you delete the number you’re adding. Besides that I can’t really see any real relevance of having them.
I know many Academic databases have a handy feature where you can sign up for updates on topics and keywords you’ve searched. Whenever a new article that fits that search is added to the database you’re notified (I’m embarrassed to say I can’t remember if there’s a term for this or not). I’ve tried to look at RSS being similarly helpful, but most websites aren’t as information specific as a string of search terms can be… I suppose some are, but unless you’re doing research on something very specific and want the most current updates it just doesn’t seem worthwhile.
So. While I do enjoy the novelty, I can’t say that it won’t be like any other novelty I’ve come across. For me the interest will probably fade after after a few weeks… it has even after a few days. I would be interested to hear what others who’ve had RSS feeds for a few months think about them. Do you still use them/check them? Do you think they create unnecessary clutter? Have you ever or do you still find them useful? Maybe I’m just not thinking objectively enough.
