Thing Three

Hey, only twenty more Things to go! Yeah team!!!
I think RSS feed is intrinsic to a convenient, usable, useful Web. I've been using Google Reader as my aggregator for over a year now, and have the updates directly on my homepage. Before that, I bookmarked all my favorite blogs (sometimes as many as fifty!) and would have to check them whenever I logged on to see if they had been updated. How lame. And time consuming and disappointing if there were no updates. For me, RSS feed has revolutionized my Web use and allowed me to check out the usefulness of many more sites than I would have been able to monitor without it.
I have to say, I use it much more with blogs than any newsfeeds. I just don't need to know if the local paper has updated its feed because I already know that it has. For more general sites such as those, I think it is just easier to have them bookmarked so that your reader doesn't get bogged down by too many updates. Or, make sure that the update from a newsfeed that you want is specific, like choose the food section or the sports section. Otherwise you'll be getting hundreds of updates throughout the day.
Also, I feel that while tools for finding feeds are interesting, I think they'll be going by the wayside any day now; there's barely a legitimate site out there that doesn't have a feed. I have found most of the sites on my reader through links from other sites and have maybe come across one or two that doesn't have a feed. I just think it's almost a thing of the past, like trying to find a listserv. But what do I know?
Really, one of my favorite library blogs is Brian Herzberger's Swiss Army Librarian. He's just got a great voice, and features a reference question of the week which I find helpful considering my lack of experience. Jessamyn and Michael Stephens were two blogs that I had on my reader but got rid of because mostly they just updated me on where they were going next to give lectures. I became totally bored. Obviously they are two great people in the library field, especially as far as advancing Web 2.0, I just wanted more description of service in the trenches. Plus, Jessamyn is the one that linked me to Brian's site, so that was good.
Another site that I think is absolutely a must for Web 2.0 is iLibrarian. It keeps me informed of the latest technologies and how they relate to libraries. I think 99% of my knowledge of new technology comes from this site.
Do not hesitate to use RSS feed. It is not an option not to.

Thing One

I am such a great fan of blogs. I thirst for postings and follow some voraciously, yet I've always been so timid about trying new things on the internet for a number of reasons:

1. I've found that the more you know about using computers, the more you don't know.
2. I could spend the better part of a day figuring all this stuff out and getting it exactly the way I want it. And that's too much time. Especially when my three-year-old is wondering why he has to wait for my attentions.
3. Security. I don't trust the government. I don't necessarily trust my fellow man. I wonder just how much of an online presence I am comfortable with. On the one hand I love the online community and the personalities that I have seen there, but on the other I don't like the thought of being watched or tracked or any of that. I mean, it's easy enough to monitor people without being given a carte blanche into their lives as it sometimes seems personal blogs provide.

But, I really want to learn to use these things for myself, my friends, my kid, my patrons, and the only real way to do that is to do it online.

So here goes.