Educate Yourself Using RSS

Sometimes keeping up with the amount of information, news, and blogs on the Internet can be time-consuming, unproductive, and frustrating. I know for the longest time I had a routine down where I'd visit my list of sites every morning looking for new content. I still have no clue why I spent all that time searching for content instead of having it come to me.

Enter Google Reader into my life amidst glorious heavenly music. It might seem like I'm being a bit dramatic but I'm not. Now, in the  morning (or often throughout the day), I go to Google Reader and read up on news, information, social network updates, blogs, and more all aggregated on one page. How?

Well it's easy. You just take advantage of, the ever growing in popularity, RSS.

RSS, or really simple syndication, is not new. However, I hardly ever hear people talking about RSS aggregators and what it can do for self-education. When you use RSS or atom feeds, you can collect them like links/favorites/bookmarks and add them to a website like Google Reader who collects and displays them all in one location. I also use folders on Google Reader so I can categorize types of feeds. This lets me keep friends' updates separate from Blackbaud updates, Technical Communication updates, my "Geek Feeds," and more.

Using an aggregator helps you collect all your feeds and have information come to you. The aggregator lets you know when something is new instead of having to stumble upon it yourself. I'm sure there are many excellent feed aggregators on the market; I just choose to perpetuate the Google empire.

If you're in Firefox, if a page has a feed, you'll see an icon like the one in this post in the website address field. When you click on it, it helps you "subscribe" to a website. On other sites, they will display that logo, something similar, or even a link to the RSS feeds. ***Hint, this page has a link in the Blog Info section.*** Once you start looking on websites, I'm sure you'll see them everywhere.

Either way, using feed aggregators not only makes sense from a time perspective but it really empowers you to take advantage of the wealth of information online. Because you can organize your feeds, you can start handling more feeds, discover new sites, and then be able to share what you find with others.

Another reason why I love Google Reader? When I find something good, they make it easy for me to share by email with people or add it my personal website of Shared Items. And don't get me started on how easy it is to integrate these features with Facebook! I'll save that for another time.

Anyone have any really cool ways they are using RSS, feed aggregators, or Google Reader?