RSS "FEEDING" FRENZY

Today's topic is: RSS Feeds. What are RSS Feeds? And why does the name sound like a brand of pet food? Well it does to me anyway. In order to learn more about RSS Feeds, I went to the search engine, Ask.com and typed the question: "What is an RSS Feed?". The response I received (here I am paraphrasing) was that an RSS (Really Simple Syndication Feed is a way in which a publisher can syndicate and post its latest updates through things like news headlines, blogs, events or general announcements. I noticed that there were a few different variations on the RSS acronym, for example, Rich Site Summary, or another one, which I think was a typographical error, Really Symbol Syndication. Anyway, back to the main topic, and I now understand what RSS Feeds are. The next question is: "How do I access these RSS Feeds?". 

I found out that there are tools called "Feed Readers" and that they can be accessed by signing up and creating an account. It just so happens that Google offer such a service (but not for long as their reader is soon to be decommissioned in July 2013 - an interesting blog looks at this as well as other possible side effects of this decision: http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/03/the-demise-of-google-reader-stability-as-a-service.html), so as I already have a Google account, I thought I may as well explore Google Reader. After accessing my account, I found that I could search for an organisation, company, government agency etc. much like a typical Google search and once I located a specific entity I was interested in, I could then subsribe to their RSS Feed. This was all fairly straightforward and easy enough to get my head around, and the concept of keeping up to date with the latest news of say, ALIA sounded quite appealing for a prospective information professional. As it turned out, the RSS Feed Reader is quite an important tool and resource, particularly for information management purposes: the user has the ability to search and locate useful sites and then to subscribe and receive free, the latest news and event updates on a single page with the added convenience of scanning the headlines and selecting only the stories of interest.

** The soon-to-be defunct Google Reader **
image taken from: http://www.google.com/reader/view/?hl=en

  

If Google Reader is on the way out, what other options are there? Well, there are quite a few: NewzCrawler, FeedDemon, Omea Reader and NewsGator are just a small selection of different RSS Feed Readers that also enable the user to email, tag, download podcasts and access blogs. I realised that some of these readers are free such as, FeedDemon, and some you have to pay for if you want the "Pro" version such as NewzCrawler. I decided to investigate by looking at Feedly as this reader was free to download and was comparable to Google Reader in terms of useability.  

** My Feedly homepage **  
image taken from: http://www.feedly.com/home#latest

After I downloaded Feedly it connected to my Google Reader account to access my saved feeds, which was rather convenient. It was then fairly easy to search and subscribe to other feeds by url, title or category, and the user-friendly look and feel of the reader made locating icons and menus a pleasurable task. It was also possible to change the feed view to either title, magazine, card or article view depending on user taste. I think I actually prefer the overall functionality of the Feedly reader to the Google Reader, so I think I have made a serendipitous discovery, which I shall keep using for all my RSS "feeding frenzy" needs!