Tech Blog

[#1]

In my last post, http://www.futureshopforums.ca/t5/Tech-Blog/RSS-The-quicker-way-to-stay-up-to-date/bc-p/212765;jsess... I discussed RSS feeds and the tools I use for managing them. But what if you DON'T read a megabyte of ASCII plaintext daily? Why should you care?

"So what?" you might ask. "Why should I care about RSS? I don't read blogs--except for this one, of course. Ha ha!"

Ha ha, indeed! Readers, it may shock and astound you to learn that you probably already DO use RSS. If I can don my jaunty, befeathered, web developer hat, RSS is not intended to be human-readable. Instead, it's an XML-formatted document http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html containing several different pieces of information: a publication date, a title, author information, and so on. As such, RSS is frequently used to automatically deliver web content from one server to another. So there.

But again, why is that relevant? Simple: it's not just for blogs. Here's a few ways I use RSS that isn't about comics or learning about how to limit my possessions to 100 items.

1. "Reading it later" with Instapaper

As I've mentioned before, I use Twitter pretty heavily. http://www.futureshopforums.ca/t5/Tech-Blog/Paying-less-attention-to-Facebook/ba-p/212050 (Want to hear about what I'm eating and all the things I hate? You should follow me.) http://twitter.com/catherineomega

Throughout the day, I encounter a number of highly amusing links and posts. But what to do? I'm a busy person; I don't have time to read everything that someone forwards to me. Well, okay, perhaps just this once--and suddenly, it's three hours later. So! Enter Instapaper. It's a bookmarklet in my web browser--whichever that may be--that, when clicked, automatically uploads the current URL to the Instapaper server. To view it, I can then log into my Instapaper account--or, better yet, my feed reader.

2. Buying stuff

I would very much like my own letterpress studio. I don't know exactly how that would pay for itself, or where I would put it, but I do suspect it would require owning some letterpress equipment. As such, I maintain an RSS feed of a (competitor) search for all instances of "letterpress" and "movable type" in Vancouver. It updates regularly on (competitor) servers, and appears in my feed reader.

3. Reading sites that aren't really blogs

Some sites are just plain HTML. Others forego a feed deliberately for fear their content would become used elsewhere, or because it's one more feature they'd have to maintain. Fortunately, there's an option for that. Tools such as http://feedity.com/ Feedity allow you to get an update whenever a URL is updated. It's not the same thing as a steady feed of new posts, but when reading sites that simply don't offer a feed--for whatever reason--it's very handy.

4. Social Networking

By logging into your Facebook account and visiting your Notifications page, http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php you can find your Notifications feed, a private feed of all the notices and "so-and-so has posted to your wall" messages. Yes, yes, you probably get those as emails. Don't like that? RSS.

Like Twitter better? Cool. Enterprising hackers and programmers have created all sorts of tools http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=rss+twitter+list to convert any Twitter list to an RSS feed. A good use for this would be those three friends you got to join Twitter, but whom never post anything. You wouldn't want to miss those. With an item in your RSS reader, you won't.

5. Taking notes

Predictably, even Simplenote, the core of my on-the-go notetaking system  http://www.catherineomega.com/2010/06/notational-velocity-and-simplenote-in-which-catherine-schools-...

, offers premium users a private feed containing all their notes. http://simplenoteapp.com/premium Admittedly, even as a web developer, I have not yet figured out something I could do with that. Pretty neat though, right? ...Right?

In my last post, I discussed RSS feeds and the tools I use for managing them. But what if you don't read a megabyte of ASCII plaintext daily? Why should you care?

"So what?" you might ask, echoing that sentiment exactly. "Why should I care about RSS? I don't read blogs--except for this one, of course. Ha ha!"

Ha ha, indeed! Readers, it may shock and astound you to learn that you probably already DO use RSS. If I can don my jaunty, befeathered, web developer hat, RSS is not intended to be human-readable. Instead, it's an XML-formatted document containing several different pieces of information: a publication date, a title, author information, and so on. As such, RSS is frequently used to automatically deliver web content from one server to another. So there.

But again, why is that relevant? Simple: it's not just for blogs. Here's a few ways I use RSS that aren't about comics, photos of index cards, or learning about how to limit my possessions to 100 items.

1. "Reading it later" with Instapaper

As I've mentioned before, I use Twitter pretty heavily. (Want to hear about what I'm eating and all the things I hate? You should follow me.)

Throughout the day, I encounter a number of highly amusing links and posts. But what to do? I'm a busy person; I don't have time to read everything that someone forwards to me. Well, okay, perhaps just this once--and suddenly, it's three hours later. So! Enter Instapaper. It's a bookmarklet in my web browser--whichever that may be--that, when clicked, automatically uploads the current URL to the Instapaper server. To view it, I can then log into my Instapaper account--or, better yet, my feed reader. After a day or two of this, I can take the time to read all the links I wanted to get to, but didn't.

2. Buying stuff

I would very much like my own letterpress studio. I don't know exactly how that would pay for itself, or where I would put it, but I do suspect it would require owning some letterpress equipment. As such, I maintain an RSS feed of all search results for "letterpress" and "movable type" on what I suspect I have to describe only as "a popular used-goods website here in Vancouver".

3. Reading sites that aren't really blogs

Some sites are just plain HTML. Others forego a feed deliberately for fear their content would become used elsewhere, or because it's one more feature they'd have to maintain. Fortunately, there's an option for that. Tools such as Feedity allow you to get an update whenever a URL is updated. It's not the same thing as a steady feed of new posts, but when reading sites that simply don't offer a feed--for whatever reason--it's very handy.

4. Social Networking

By logging into your Facebook account and visiting your Notifications page, you can find your Notifications feed, a private feed of all the notices and "so-and-so has posted to your wall" messages. Yes, yes, you probably get those as emails. Don't like that? RSS.

Like Twitter better? Cool. Enterprising programmers have created all sorts of tools to convert any Twitter list to an RSS feed. A good use for this would be those three friends you got to join Twitter, but whom never post anything. You wouldn't want to miss those. With an item in your RSS reader, you won't.

5. Taking notes

Predictably, even Simplenote, the core of my on-the-go notetaking system, offers premium users a private feed containing all their notes. Admittedly, even as a web developer, I have not yet figured out something practical to do with that. Pretty neat though, right? ...Right?

How about you, how are you using RSS?