Value of blogs and rss feeds

Original post: 12/16/2004

Blogs aren’t all that new. For me they are the perfect example of why not to go with your first impressions. I originally took blogs as simply online diaries, and there are plenty of those, from the simple My Summer Vacation types to minute by minute commentaries on recent events like the presidential debates. Honestly blogs such as these don’t do much for me. While browsing blogs online I started noticing the rss feed or news feed links, These links are simply xml files of the blogs designed so programs can capture the information for review somewhere other than the website, interesting. Now what kinds of programs would do this, well they’re called aggregators, and the best one I found is from Bradbury Software http://www.bradsoft.com/ and its called FeedDemon. First off its very similar to the Outlook Interface I’ve grown accustomed to. Next it came pre-loaded with what I originally thought was way too many news feeds. However as I began to use the system I really enjoyed having the predefined feeds available. The big thing I’ve hooked on here are searches and watches. Basically watches are predefined searches that keep a look out for keywords in the feeds and give you a simple view of all the entries found. Sure sounds like google but here’s the difference. I do a search on google today and the same search tomorrow I’m likely to get the same hits, news feeds and blog entries give you current happenings on specific topics. I’ve found mainstream sites seem to post yesterdays news, information that has been completely flushed out and approved by all bureaucratic channels. I’m looking at blogs and news feeds more now as chatting with other professionals in your industry at a user group or convention. In short I’m sold on the value of unfiltered personal commentary.Check out FeedDemon or any of the many other rss agregators available online.Bradbury Software – FeedDemon RSS / Atom Feed Reader for Windows