Archive for the 'RSS' Category

IE 7 ruined my RSS

Published on 8 March 2007 in RSS readers, RSS and email. 3 Comments

IE 7 ruined my Keeping Up to Date, database alerts/RSS class. It was the only browser available on the computers in the library training room, and the fact that it automatically, neatly handles RSS feeds and displays them in a nice readable manner meant that I couldn’t make my point that (for non-IE 7 users) RSS feeds display as almost unreadable, very off-putting gibberish. I shouldn’t grumble too much, as this just shows that I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been.

I mentioned that I wasn’t sure what online RSS reader to show the class - I ended up showing them both Google Reader and Bloglines. Of course I pointed out IE 7’s built-in reader - but I left it at that. None of the attendees were already using IE 7. (I could have asked about Firefox, I suppose, I don’t know why I didn’t.) Although this class was different in that four of the sixteen attendees had actually heard of RSS (usually none of the class will have heard of it), I could see that many of them were finding the concept a bit difficult to grasp. Still, a few of the students looked mildly interested, and one student actually stayed behind, set up her reader (Google) and confirmed with me that a New Zealand news site she was interested in subscribing to had no feeds.

One of the attendees who knew a bit about RSS had a chat with me about why I thought people aren’t using RSS more widely. I think that RSS isn’t as easy to use as it could be, although this is changing with aggregator options being built into email clients and web browsers. I also think that using RSS hasn’t become habitual, like email is. Whenever I’ve shown people email and RSS as options for keeping informed, the majority are quite happy to use email to receive alerts and subscriptions, but seem to baulk at the thought of having to check Something Else.

How much resistance was there to using email when The Internet first entered the popular consciousness? I seem to remember that there was some, but I could be imagining things. Anyone know?

Sharing stuff using Google Reader

Published on 27 February 2007 in RSS readers, Google Reader, RSS and sharing. 3 Comments
Non-RSS readers of this blog (are there [m]any of you out there?) may have noticed that I’ve been adding a series of links listed as Reading on the right of the page, right next to the most recent post.

This is a list generated thanks to Google Reader, which allows you to “share” blog posts as you go through them. I like this feature very much - such a nifty way of marking and pointing to interesting posts and creating a link blog. Apart from embedding these links in your blog, they’ve also made it possible for you to share your entire link blog, should you want to. Robert Scoble shares his (there’s a link on his blog), as does Steven Cohen (he’s also got a post asking people to share the links to their shared items).

One feature I do wish was available as part of the shared items feature, is the ability to annotate an item (a la del.icio.us).

I’m still maintaining (ie I haven’t deleted) my Bloglines account, but that is because I use it when I show people how to use RSS. I still haven’t worked out what I’m going to use instead of Bloglines in the classroom situation. Google Reader is fine and works very well, but the fact that you need a Google account to use it might be an obstacle to some. Although you could argue that you need a Bloglines account to use Bloglines (a Yahoo account to use Yahoo, a Yahoo account to use Flickr- bah!, a del.icio.us account to use del.icio.us…). I have a keeping-up-to-date (alerting services and RSS) class to teach next week, it’ll all come to a head then, I suspect.

RSS (again)

Published on 2 October 2006 in RSS. 10 Comments

Been thinking about better ways to show people The Joys of RSS, again. I’ve been pondering this for a while, because of all the ‘tech’ that’s out there, RSS is probably my favourite.

And this morning Iris’s survey on info lit and student research needs (do it, especially if you’re an academic librarian!) really started me thinking about it again - one of the questions was about any trends or changes in students’ research needs, and my response was that I’ve noticed that many students (and staff) are very keen to learn more about information and communication technologies and better ways of using them to keep up with all the information that’s out there. Whenever we’ve run any sessions on RSS, for example, it’s been standing room only!

RSS is not one of the easiest things to teach, though. Showing people usually works best. I do like Google’s description of their new version of Google Reader as ‘your inbox for the web’. And Stephanie Quilao’s How to explain RSS the Oprah Way is also very clear. Might have to rework the workshop I usually teach on RSS to incorporate the explanations they provide.

I can’t imagine life pre-RSS, now. Who needs bookmarks??

At the moment I have 404 subscriptions in Bloglines. I’ve given up trying to keep my subscriptions below a certain number. I decided there was no particular reason for the limit I’d assigned - it was completely arbitrary and I don’t remember why I decided I needed such a limit, anyway.

In any case, using the ‘Show only updated feeds’ option means there are usually only about 50 new things to read at any one time. And the best thing about RSS? Whenever I fall too far behind, I just use the ‘Mark All Read’ option, and start again.

It’s not that blogs are so trivial it doesn’t matter whether I read them or not, but I can set Bloglines to display the last week’s or month’s posts if I wonder whether I’ve missed anything. And the beauty of blogs is that if something is really that juicy, I can count on bloggers to keep mentioning it.

(Do you read this blog using Bloglines or some other RSS reader? Or do you actually visit this blog directly? Feel free to let me know - comment, or flexnib at g mail dot com.)

Listening to: Pet Shop Boys, Discography, Always on my mind.