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Get R.I.C.H. Quick —
How to use "RSS Instant Content Harvesting"
to manage information overload
by Michael Pastore
How can you harvest information from the boundless fields of the Internet, with maximum of efficiency and a minimum investment of your time?
"Information overload is a monster, but the monster can be tamed by using RSS."
RSS -- Real Simple Syndication -- provides a near-perfect solution. What's so great about RSS? According to an article in the BBC News (February 20, 2004) "The most compelling use of RSS is that it lets users read dozens of websites, all on the same page. The sites can be scanned in seconds rather than having to be laboriously loaded individually." ... In three words: RSS saves time.
After much trial and even more error, here's my strategy for fighting information overload using RSS.
1. Get Firefox browser. For the best security, and for easy management of bookmarks, choose and install Firefox browser. http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
- Once you’ve set up Firefox, look at the many useful extensions that are available to enhance your browsing experience.
- Use Firefox’s bookmarks feature to bookmark every bookmark that you would like to keep private.
2. Use Deli.cio.us. For bookmarks you want to share with the world -- and access from any Net-connected computer -- set up a free page at the social bookmarking site, delicious: http://www.del.icio.us
Deli.cio.us has four notable features:
a) You can access your bookmarks from any Net-connected computer;
b) You can share your bookmarks, and get bookmarks from other persons;
c) You can tag your bookmarks, with one or more tags, so they can be easily organized and sorted; and
d) you can turn all your bookmarks, or any set of tags, into an RSS feed.
Once you’ve set up your Del.icio.us page:
- Get familiar with the basic features. Keep in mind that all your bookmarks posted to delicious will be visible by everyone with access to the Internet.
- Add a “post to delicious” tab to your Firefox browser. It’s easy to do: follow the instructions on the deli.cio.us site.
- Whenever you see a web page, or a web site you simply click the tab on the top of your Firefox browswer add this link to your delicious page.
- Take advantage of the delicious “tags” feature. Whenever you add a bookmark, you can add one or more tags. A web site might be given one tag only, or many tags: the New York Times home page might be tagged “news”, “headlines”, “new york” and so on.Using tags, you can sort and separate your bookmarks. For example, you can choose to see all the bookmarks that you have tagged "environment".
- And here’s the amazingest feature of all: All your delicious bookmarks, and, bookmarks that have been categorized with a specific tags, are available to you as an RSS feed (which you can add to your RSS Reader!). Here's how to make the Delicious pages and tagged categories into feeds (excerpted from the Delicious Help Page):
- User: del.icio.us/rss/joe
- Tag: del.icio.us/rss/tag/bananas
- Combo: del.icio.us/rss/julian/science
- Fancy: del.icio.us/rss/alan/graphics+3d
- Popular: del.icio.us/rss/popular
- Main: del.icio.us/rss/
For more about Del.icio.us and tools to enhance it, see this page: http://pchere.blogspot.com/2005/02/absolutely-delicious-complete-tool.html
3. Choose an RSS reader. Some are free and some cost, but the free ones are excellent, and there’s no need to pay for getting RSS.
Here are some RSS readers that I tested.
- Lektora http://www.lektora.com has a beautiful interface -- it's easy to read, and it's easy to move the bookmarks around. Despite the pleasant face, it has one serious flaw: when you open Lektora you see only the updated RSS feeds, not all your feeds. What's wrong with that? If I have one-humdred feeds, and open Lektora and read four of them, the next time I look at Lektora I might miss content from the other ninety-six blogs. ... (I informed their tech support about the need to fix this.) When they make this change -- give me the option to see all the feeds, read or unread -- then Lektora will be my RSS reader of choice
- My Yahoo... now has a feature where RSS feeds can be easily added. If you use MyYahoo as your news portal then this might be the best choice for you. But it is a bit clumsy to move the feeds around. And there is not yet a way to categorize your blogs, by placing them into a tree-like structure such as folders.
- Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com is an online RSS reader that works flawlessly. You decide which of your feeds will be private, and which will be public -- visible to everyone. Bloglines has excellent features, but there's one disadvantage: with a dial-up connection it is S...L...O...W.
- Sage Reader, a Firefox extension. (http://sage.mozdev.org/) Sage is my first choice for managing RSS feeds. Download the sage reader -- it's free -- and then install it as an extension to your Firefox browser. With your Firefox open, you can open or close the Sage reader with a shortcut key Alt-S. Whenever you find a feed that you want to add to your list, just drag its icon -- located in the browser bar beside the URL -- into the Sage window. Another nice feature of Sage is that it can automatically search a web page and find all the feeds on that page. After the feeds are found, a box appears listing the feeds; from the box you can simply click from the list to add the feed you want.
4. Finding blogs and RSS pages.
Whenever I find a source of blogs, I add them -- with one click -- to my Deli.cio.us bookmarks. Well-known sources for finding blogs and RSS feeds are Technorati, Syndic8, and Feedster. A complete list of more than 30 sources for finding blogs and feeds is available from my delcious page, here: http://del.icio.us/youthtopia/blog_sources
5. Future Developments
In the near future, RSS will get even better. Here's my prediction for three coming trends.
A. Forums. Forums -- websites where users can interact about various themes -- are superb resources for finding information about a specific topic. Baffled computer-users submit US questions, and these questions skillfully answered by experts and enthusiasts around the world. Right now, only a handful of all the forums, are RSS-enabled. Soon, many more will be, and then this valuable resource will be at your fingertips.
B. News Alerts. Right now, Yahoo (http://alerts.yahoo.com/) and Google (http://www.google.com/alerts) -- both in the "beta" phase -- have excellent news alert features. Simply define your subjects of interest, and then the latest news about these subjects is sent to you by e-mail. Soon, I predict, you'll be able to get your personalized news alerts as an RSS feed.
C. Podcasting -- is coming -- or maybe it is already here. You can get RSS feeds to hundreds of podcasts, and then download information in an audio format. Download now, and listen anytime.
Now I depend less on e-mail newsletters and web searching for the latest news. Why search for the news, when the news can come to you? Information overload is a monster, but the monster can be tamed by using RSS.
