How I'm Using RSS...

I've been using NetNewsWire as my RSS reader for about a year now. In that time my subscription list went from one feed to the current total of 80. I can't speak for others, but I'm using RSS as a replacement for broadcast email lists, a replacement for my daily web visits, as an adjunct to keeping my computer software up to date, and as part of my Big Sync. Broadcast email lists, have always been a favorite of mine. I'm on several lists from Politech to IP, and each one gives me a great amount of information. While those two lists are still email-only I'm finding that some of the lists I've been reading are making the transition to a Blog with RSS. This is great, because it keeps this stuff out of my inbox, and lets me read it much quicker. Using RSS as a replacement for daily web visits, is a real productivity boon for me. In the past I couldn't sit down at an Internet connected machine without browsing some of my favorite www sites. I like to see updates when they happen, and that was the best way to do it. Today, of course, I just subscribe to the RSS feed. When the site is updated I'll find out about it in the next few hours. I don't have to go look for myself. I've also been using RSS feeds as a companion to the work I do to keep my computers up to date. Many of my favorite developers are now offering RSS feeds on their www pages. So, when they release a new product, or a new version of a product, I will know about it. I don't have to remember to hit the www site to find out about the update. I sent a question out to the RSS list a few days ago. I was asking about how people deal with their feeds, because I had noticed that there were quite a few people who have subscribed to 200+ feeds. Basically, I was wondering if people treat RSS like email or if they treat it like usenet. From the responses I got it seems that most people treat RSS like usenet. They skim the headlines and then click through to anything that sounds interesting. RSS is particularly good for this reading model because it gives you several levels of information. The headline, the body of the post, and the URL. This is how I'm using RSS in my daily information sync. When I see a new post in my reader, I look at the headline. If the headline is interesting I read the body of the post (which may or may not be the entire post) if I find it interesting, then I click on the URL. This loads the web page in a tab in my browser, and then I go on reading through the other headlines. Once I have gotten through all of the new items in my news reader, I go to my www browser and start reading through all of the open tabs. If I can't remember why I opened the tab, I close it. If the article is interesting I might follow the links, and if the article proves dull then I close the tab and move on. One other things I do is always follow an article's trail from one blog to another. Often, while I'm doing this, I pick up a couple of new RSS feeds along the way. After I've gotten down to just a few tabs of really good information I usually start recording stuff on my own blog, generally taking bits and pieces of the information I've found from the morning sync. Sometimes there is a lot of stuff to talk about, and other times there is very little. I really like this workflow though. It feels very natural, and very fast. It's a good way to wade through the mountains of information that come in every day. It makes me more efficient with my time, and more productive with my resources. This experience is why I think RSS is going to be a big technology in the next few years. This is a new way to communicate on the web. It's a cross between email and web browsing. It fits a niche very comfortably. It's getting easier to use, and it's starting to really catch on outside of the geek community, in fact my entire family Dad, Mom, and Jenna all read this site through it's RSS feed.