Week #4 - RSS

Oye, I am horribly behind with Library 2.0... In my defense... no, I have no defense :D I'm just slack.

RSS is pretty nifty though. I didn't really use it until we upgraded to Explorer 7 though. We covered RSS in library school and a Learned Colleague talked about his RSS feeds before that (which I would nod along wisely to but have nooo idea what it really meant at the time..) but I never got around to signing up with a reader. The built-in reader with Explorer 7 is great though; it's as easy as adding something to your favourites and there's no password or account name required. I signed up to several blogs and cheered with geeky glee whenever I saw the little RSS icon on a news *coughtrashyentertainment* page I liked. The only downside was that it was bound to my computer at home, so when we started Library 2.0-ing at work I created an account with Google Reader. It works in pretty much the same way that bloglines does when you want to add subscriptions but it looks niftier and doesn't include the word 'blog' in the title. (Reeeeally don't like that word.. it's almost as ugly as 'pulchritude'. Blech... and badoom chish!)

I must confess though. I got bored with RSS. And stopped checking Google Reader, and my Explorer 7 version. I missed the shiny personalised versions of the original websites/blogs. If I were using it to read summaries of news items, or newly received books at the library (hint hint) I'd probably keep up with it more, but most of the blogs/websites I subscribed to were the kind of ones that you want to read the whole article/entry, not just briefly scan and move along.

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