Thing 30 More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

There is no reason for anyone to use the internet and not use an RSS reader. It is hands down one of the most useful tools out there and I adore it. I, of course, use Google Reader. In fact I started using it before I really understood what it was, but the prompts were so simple that I was able to figure it out and realize the awesome power of it fairly quickly. One of my favorite blogs, 20x200, is part blog, part art gallery and part store. Each week, this bricks and mortar gallery in New York introduces two new prints, one photograph and one graphic, and you can buy these limited editions for as cheap as $20!!! Jen Bekman, who runs the gallery, is cool, completely immersed in the latest art and came up with the idea of making the latest art available to the masses. If I did not have RSS, I would forget-JUST PLAIN FORGET- to check and see what goodies are waiting for me. Seriously, it's like having a little present that you've customized for yourself waiting for you. And you don't have to fill up your email inbox.
With that said, some of the feeds are a pain. I've subscribed to a couple of different news feeds and the amount of material has just been overwhelming. For instance, I started subscribing to the (new) White House blog when Obama became president. It was SO cool to get a play-by-play of what was going on every day. One of the problems, though, was frequently the feed would send me the entire blog: all the entries from the beginning, even after I had read them all. Now this was clearly a problem with the platform itself, but I unsubscribed because of it. Others, like the Star Tribune politics blog, inundated me with too many things. Same with The Morning News, an really great online magazine. Every year in March, The Morning News does a "Tournament of Books," pitting the latest, hippest books against each other according to the very subjective reviewers. It's funny and fun and I would like to subcribe to just that, but when I subscribe I get EVERYTHING that The Morning News posts, which is like a magazine's worth of reading PER DAY.
Now, I've heard the opinion of some that you should just subcribe to as many things as interest you and don't worry if you don't get to it all, but I just cannot do it. I have hand-picked these 28 subscriptions and I want to read it all. I don't like feeling unfinished. It's weird the relationship that I have with my subscriptions: I've unsubscribed if a blogger is too depressing, or makes too many of the wrong choices, or blogs about stupid things once too often. The choice of these feeds is so personal, it's like creating your own library.
Delicious, on the other hand, has not been as reveletory for me. I went through a spate of using it for all web pages that interested me, but, like my former files of articles that I would rip out of magazines, I rarely, if ever, accessed them again. I definitely like knowing it is there, and probably someday I'll have a use for it, but for now I just don't need it.

Just an Observation about RSS feeds and Design

I read most of the blogs that I follow straight off of my Google home page where I have a RSS reader installed. Most of the entries come up full-text and I never even see the web page that the text is from. Of course, I check my blog posts to make sure that they look okay from the reader, but AFTER ALL THAT WORK to update and add to my page none of it is even represented on the reader. If I was trying to sell something or get people involved in something and the page was part of that theme, I would really want to try to remember adjust my settings so that people would have to go to my page to read the entire entry.
Now, I'll admit, I find it super annoying when I am required to do that, but at the same time, for favored pages, I grudgingly do. I guess the best answer to all of this is to make sure that the content is just as strong as the aesthetic and the bells and whistles.

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.