Thing #8 Make life simple with RSS

This post is about my RSS experiences. I'm home in bed with a tummy virus, so I may be more negative than usual. Please accept my apologies beforehand.

Despite all my woes, I first want to point out that I am now the proud owner of a bloglines account and am successfully subscribed to 10 feeds.

Now for the woes.

Here are the mistakes I made, which I share so that others can avoid them:

1. I thought a bloglines account meant that I needed to figure out how to install that little orange button into this blog. This blog and bloglines are two different things, thankfully.

2. After hours of reading all the links on Library Learning at home with my head spinning, I realized that you don't need to read everything. Fellow neophytes, you will save a lot of heartache if you just go to the links:

* RSS in Plain English. The link to this is in the "Week End, Week Begin" post on 10/14 after you click"RSS Feeds" in the sentence "This week we'll tackle RSS feeds"
* Feed Me
* Adding RSS Feeds to Bloglines
and
* Using Bloglines Tutorial - but only steps 1 - 3. It's a little tricky, because it isn't just 3 steps, but has a 1a, 1b, 1c etc for each number. Don't do it on a mac, I think that's why step 3g was different for me.

Now, here's what I'm supposed to talk about:

* What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

Once you know what you are doing, it saves a lot of time.
I must admit, yesterday I hated RSS. I also had a temperature and upset tummy. :-O Now that I understand it a bit better, it's growing on me. My fever is also gone. :-)

* How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?

It will save time monitoring both news headlines and career info.

* How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

I subscribed to a library's newsfeed. It has all kinds of children's book reviews (with photos). It may have had crafts. I'll check back and post updates.