Task 8

Bring the news to you - "Really Simple" with RSS & a newsreader

You’ve heard of RSS? You’ve seen those small funny tags on websites? You’ve heard co-workers and acquaintances swear by it, but still have no idea what RSS is? Well don’t worry, according to a recent survey you’re still in the majority, but this is changing rapidly. In the information world, RSS is not only revolutionalizing the way news, media and content creators share information, but it also is swiftly changing the way everyday users are consuming information.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a file format for delivering regularly updated information over the web. Just think about the websites and news information sources you visit every day and the time it takes time to scour those sites for the text you want to read. An RSS feed will collect all the changes on a site you visit and display them in a 'reader' for you to access quickly and easily.

This week’s discovery exercises focus on learning about RSS news feeds and setting up a Bloglines account (a free online newsreader) for yourself to bring your feeds together.

Resources:

YouTube Movie: RSS in Plain English

UC Berkeley: Introduction to RSS

Wikipedia: RSS



Exercise:

You can use either Google Reader or Bloglines for this tutorial

Follow the discovery resources above to learn more about RSS and newsreaders.

1. Create a free online Bloglines account for yourself
2. Subscribe to at least 10 newsfeeds to your reader
3. See Using Bloglines Tutorial steps 1-3 for instructions.


Newsfeeds:
1. Subscribe to several of your co-workers' feeds - L2 participant blog feeds. This is as easy as typing the blog URL into the subscribe field in Bloglines. Try it, it's easy!

2. Add a few other types of news feeds from news sources

The Learning 2.0 blog feed
Charlotte.Com news feeds (pick at least one)
PLCMC Core Compentency blog
Reader’s Club new review feeds
Unshelved - Library cartoon feed

Summarise
Create a post in your blog about this exercise.

Optional: If you're up to the challenge, you can provide the URL address to your public bloglines account (find where to find this below)


Don’t know what to blog about? Think about these questions:

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?
How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?


How to find your public Bloglines URL:

Click on the Share tab within your Bloglines account:





Scroll down the right screen pane and locate the public URL (see screenshot)


Be sure to add this as part of your post to demonstrate your completion of this activity.



PS: Once you tackle this discovery exercise, you've tackled the most difficult one of the whole 23. :)