RSS feeds are ubiquitious. One can get NYTimes news, WSJ articles, BBC stories, Dilbert cartoons, and, of course, millions of Blogs “fed” to one by RSS feeds, instead of navigating to the web-sites. I am curious about how many people here use RSS feeds as one of the important ways they access information and opinion.
I enjoy the RSS Feed screensaver on my Mac, which I use for graphics work in between tasks that involve my work-supplied PC, but would like to have more than one feed at a time.
I like the fact that OO.net has a feed - I visit and read a lot more often than I would otherwise.
I finally got around to subscribing to some RSS feeds a couple of months ago after the AP headlines on Yahoo! News became more than I could take.
I do own a television set - but apart from the occasional DVD or VHS, I might actually watch the thing once or twice a year at the very most. I don’t subscribe to cable and I finally canceled my daily newspaper subscription after I got sick and tired of the ritual of hauling my accumulated pile of unread papers out to the trash. So apart from the occasional top of the hour ABC radio news headlines on the talk radio station I listen to when driving around, I get all of my news on the Internet or from radio talk shows.
Until a few months ago, the way I kept up with the news was to glance at the news headlines on Yahoo to get an idea what the “drive by” mainstream media was up to. If a story was of interest, I would click on it and read it. If I wanted to know more about the story - well, there are tons of places I can go to online to get more in-depth coverage. If I wanted to hear a non-leftist take on a given story with political ramifications - well, there are plenty of right wing opinion sites, some of which have a certain amount of regard for, that I can go to for a different view or for relevant facts that the drive by media conveniently ignores.
I almost always expect for stories from the AP and the mainstream media to have a strong left wing slant and to be distorted in whichever way suits their agenda. That’s just a given. Unfortunately, I have noticed over the past year or so that the headlines have become increasingly slanted. In some cases, the information in the headlines was the exact opposite of what the thrust of the story was. For example, when Rush Limbaugh reached a settlement with the rogue district attorney in Florida who attempted to conduct a fishing trip through his private medical records in order to see if there was anything in them that could put him behind bars (i.e. take his views off the air), rather than have the headline read something to the effect of “Limbaugh, District Attorney Reach Settlement To End Legal Battle” the AP headline read “Rush Limbaugh Arrested.”
Viewership and readership for mainstream media outlets is at an all time low and is continuing to sink further - so I guess headlines are increasingly the best way they have to get their agenda across to a widespread audience. Personally, I can stomach only so much of it.
Unfortunately, there are not a lot of alternatives when it comes to up-to-date news headlines. Al-AP is dishonest and Red Reuters is even worse. What I ended up doing was using the My Yahoo feature where one can subscribe to multiple RSS feeds. I then went to the websites of two major newspapers that lean somewhat to the right - The Washington Times and the New York Sun and signed up for the RSS feed to their headlines. They cover the same stories as do the Leftist media outlets - and my hunch that their headlines would be worded less offensively and the stories would be less slanted was correct. Unfortunately, because they are both newspapers, the headlines in the RSS feed tend to be updated only once per day. Of the two, I have been most impressed by the New York Sun.
As for other uses of RSS - while I can see how it can be handy and wonderful for a lot of things, my particular problem is not finding interesting content online. My problem is there is more interesting content that I already know about than I could ever possibly get around to. So most of my efforts along those lines is to limit the number of websites I keep up with.
The unread newspaper thing is familiar. I’ve given up on all but the WSJ, and even there I basically scan headlines and read only one or two in-depth stories. I follow a similar procedure with some technical magazines that I subscribe to, except that unread ones sometimes wait for a few months before I get to them.
I understand what you say about trying to limit the web-sites you keep up with. However, what I’m curious about is whether there are some that you keep up with by visiting the site rather than by using their RSS feed, and if so why you don’t use RSS in those cases.
What I’ve found is that using an RSS Feed aggregator has been particularly good in allowing me to keep up with sites that I would otherwise only visit infrequently. For instance, I subscribe to a whole lot of software feeds that are related to the work I do. Of these, some are sites by authors who have written books and who’s opinion I respect, but who only very occasionally publish a technical article on their site. So, for instance, if David Flanagan writes an article “My 5 favorite features in the new version of J2EE”, I want to read it. However, if it is not published in one of the top journals, I would probably miss it.
To keep up with people like that, my previous procedure was to add their sites to a special sub-category in my browser’s favorites. Then, every few weeks I would visit some of those favorites and see if they has something interesting. With RSS, In don’t need to do that. If there’s something new, the reader/aggregator gives me a visual indication.
Similarly, unsatisfied with the media’s reporting on Iraq, I subscribe to a few Iraqi bloggers and US military bloggers, many of whom blog only very occasionally. Again, RSS increases the breadth that is easy to keep up with. Often, even when I don’t have time to read a story, I have time to scan a headline or the first few lines and dismiss it, or mark as interesting, so that I can get to it later.
I understand what you say about trying to limit the web-sites you keep up with. However, what I’m curious about is whether there are some that you keep up with by visiting the site rather than by using their RSS feed, and if so why you don’t use RSS in those cases.
Yes, there are sites I keep up with to a certain degree by visiting the site directly.
For example, during certain news cycles when it is pretty obvious the Leftist media is distorting things in a big way or refusing to cover certain aspects of a story, there are three conservative blogs that I can more or less count on to provide the facts that the media choses to not write about: Powerline, Captain’s Quarters and Michelle Malkin. They may not always break the story - but they can usually be counted on linking to those who do. When I set up my RSS feeds, I included all three sites. My problem was that I found myself clicking on the links - which I really shouldn’t be doing to the degree that I do. It became just another distraction that I don’t need.
Also, there are certain news cycles where the particular subjects that conservative blogs talk about nauseate me - and, in those instances, I really don’t want those headlines imposing themselves on me. I already know all too well how crappy today’s culture can sometimes be - the last thing I need to be is constantly reminded. If I am in the mood to follow what they are saying I will go to their sites and probably read every posting they have up. If I am not in the mood for them - well, I don’t even want to have to think about them.
I have pretty much come to the conclusion that I already pay far too much attention to current events and politics than I probably should. I have chosen NOT to actively engage in political or intellectual activism at this point in my life as I am already stretched too thin with other projects that I consider to be more important. I only have a need to keep up with such things in a very general sort of way - and, unfortunately, I often find myself spending far too much time following such things more closely than I have need to.
I could very easily spend 8 hours a day reading things on the Internet that I find fascinating and still not get to everything. Obviously doing that would be a very bad thing
What I’ve found is that using an RSS Feed aggregator has been particularly good in allowing me to keep up with sites that I would otherwise only visit infrequently. For instance, I subscribe to a whole lot of software feeds that are related to the work I do. Of these, some are sites by authors who have written books and who’s opinion I respect, but who only very occasionally publish a technical article on their site. So, for instance, if David Flanagan writes an article “My 5 favorite features in the new version of J2EE”, I want to read it. However, if it is not published in one of the top journals, I would probably miss it.
I agree that RSS would be excellent for something like that. I can’t think of a whole lot of things I personally have need to keep up with in a similar manner.
The one thing I wish RSS feeds were available for to a greater degree is discussion boards. I do know that OO, for instance, has one and I did subscribe to it. But I found it to be pretty much worthless. The headlines tended to be hours old and didn’t seem to cover all active topics. If I want to keep up with what is going on here, it is not that difficult for me to type in the URL and have immediate access to everything. And there are times when I DON’T want to know what is going on here as it would be a distraction.
What I think would be nice, however, is if I could subscribe to a RSS feed based only on individual posters. For example, Vladimir Berkov is a friend of mine from outside of Objectivism. Even if I am not following OO very closely, every so often I will do a member search on him here and on a couple of other message boards we both participate in just to at least skim the various things he has been writing about. It would be nice if I could set up an RSS feed on each board to do that for me. Also, I find that on almost every discussion board, there are one or two people whose postings are almost always worth reading - and it would be nice to be able to follow their postings through an RSS feed. One of the networks through which Radio Dismuke is carried is Live 365. They have a message board that can only be accessed by broadcasters which contains a lot of technical updates that are useful to know about as well as informative news about Internet radio in general. But I find following their message board to be very frustrating because the vast majority of postings consist of assorted whines and complaints from other broadcasters - many of whom, unfortunately, tend to be obnoxious, petulant hippies. The members of Live 365’s technical staff, however, tend to be reasonable and intelligent individuals and they actively monitor and participate in the message board. If something is discussed that is worth reading about, chances are good one of them will comment on it. It would be nice if I could subscribe to an RSS feed limited to those particular people’s postings so that I don’t have to wade through thread after thread of nonsense as the price of keeping up with what is going on in the wider world of Internet radio.
Yes, some RSS feeds have too much “noise”. Some sites have “solved” this by creating multiple feeds. For instance Bloomberg News had a wehole lot of specific feeds on various topics, instead of one big feed. The better way would be to use a tool that filters feeds the way one like, personalizing them just the way one wants. FeedRinse lets you do this. The next logical step is for the readers/aggregators to incorporate filtering. Given how simple it would be to implement, I’m surprized they have not done so already. The ideal is a situation where you can define filters so well that you see everything you want to so, and nothing else.