This is the third post in my series of introducing you to the common forms of social media that can lead to information overload or infomania. In the first post we had a closer look at social media and blogs, today we turn our attention to RSS.
Wikipedia.org describe RSS as:
“RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works — such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based or desktop-based.”
Commoncraft describe it as follows:
So what has all this got to do with me and productivity?
Glad you asked. I follow about 100 different websites with “frequently updated works” at any given moment. (The number varies as my interests change and I add or remove blogs / sites to accommodate this.) As you can imagine a scenario like this could rapidly lead to information overload. My strategy to avoid this scenario is by subscribing to all these sites via RSS feeds with a news reader. News readers are available in many different formats and I use the following:
- a web-based version
- an iPhone version of the newsreader.
All my feeds are syncronised so I can follow the news whatever my context, e.g. at the office and home I use Google Reader and when I am away from my desk an iPhone application called Byline that syncronises my Google Reader feeds. Using this approach I only have to open one site (my on-line news reader) or one application (my iPhone news reader) as opposed to dozens of different sites. Moreover, when I read an article in one place it is automatically marked as read in the other locations, so I don’t have to deal with the same “Unread items” in various locations.
Google Reader
Byline
I have been making use of RSS feeds and readers for many years and can quite honestly say that it is one of the more useful applications of Internet enabled technology. When used properly it can be a wonderful source of information and without a doubt, boost your productivity.
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