Now that you have a newsreader (your Bloglines account), you can begin adding other newsfeeds that interest you. There are several ways you can locate newsfeeds: - When visiting your favorite websites -- look for news feed icons that indicate the website provides it.
- Often an a feed icon will be diplayed somewhere in the navigation of the site. (Here's an image that contains a sampling of several feed icons).
- Use Blogline's Search tool - Bloglines recently expanded search tool lets you search for news feeds in addition to posts, citations and the web. Use the Search for Feeds option to locate RSS feeds you might be interested in.
- Other Search tools that can help you find feeds:
- Feedster - One of the largest collections of RSS feeds, Feedster lets you search for feeds in three categories: news, blogs & podcasts
- Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlets RSS feeds for information, not weblogs
- Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
- Technorati - Technorati is a popular blog finding tool that lets you search for blogs. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging tools, Technorati Blog Search can help you find RSS feeds for topic specific blogs you may be interested in. Additonal Resource:
- Technorati Tutorial on finding and adding your blog
Excercise:
1. Explore some of the search tools noted above that can help you locate some news feeds.
2. Create a blog post about your experience. Don't know what to blog about? Here some questions to think about ...
Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use? Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing? What kind of unuseful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find? What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?
EXTRA STUFF -- Feed icon information: In Febuary of this year, the adoption of standard feed icon among websites and browsers finally began helping to stop the madness and confusion caused by so many variations. So far this icon has been adopted by many websites and browers, including Opera and FireFox, where it displays in the address bar: The next release of Internet Explorer is suppose to have this as well. For more information about this emerging new standard, see Feedicons.com
3 comments:
Hhhmm, Robin, so how does RSS feeds relate to the catalog's searching and emailing patrons when it finds something that matches their "prefered searches"?
Right at the moment - not much. However, in the (hopefully) near future, we will be offering a way for patrons to get their preferred searches, soon-to-be-overdue materials notices and hold notices via RSS. Now this is done via email, but many other libraries offer this exact same service via RSS, too. This is available in III now (I think), but as an extra paid module. Some day, however, it will be available to everyone who uses the III catalog!
Brilliant application/connection Tammy!
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