Living Above The Norm

I was having a conversation with my buddy @ryancardona today and he was laughing at how just about every time he tries to share a new technology or software with me, I’ve already either known about it or have found something better – “How do you know all that stuff?” We laughed and joked, but I could tell he really wanted to know.

Well at the risk of exposing the little man behind the curtain of the great Oz and dismantling my Information Rock Star image (that still cracks me up), I’ll share with you one of my little tricks for staying “in the know” and caught up with the latest and greatest. Noticed I said “one” of my tricks – hahaha.

The Newspaper of Today

Still read the newspaper? You’d be surprised how many people don’t anymore. The days of dad sitting at the breakfast table reading the morning paper have gone – at least at the Norman household. Here are some problems I have with the newspaper:

• It costs money
• What I want to know is surrounded by what I don’t care to know
• I hate jumping pages just to finish an article
• What I want to know is surrounded by what I don’t care to know
• Some papers just don’t print some of the news
• They focus on what they think will sell the paper, not the real news
• What I want to know is surrounded by what I don’t care to know

…ok, so you get the picture. Well, I’ve found (or rather taken advantage of) a piece of free technology that allows me to get whatever information I want, from where ever I want it, and have it sitting in one place, waiting for me to read it. And I can spend as much or as little time as I want sorting through it all. It’s called RSS – and I bet you didn’t know about it.

Really Simple Syndication

Yahoo recently surveyed over 4000 internet users about the RSS technology and what they found was pretty amazing. Among others, they found:

• 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS
• 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology
• 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts

Let’s say that there are 3 web sites that you like to frequent on a regular basis because you find the content to be valuable and you learn new things when you do. Or perhaps there’s someone you know, like me, who has a blog, like mine, that you want to stay current with. You open your browser, type in the address, and look around. Then you type in another, “ooh, look at the picture, what is that?”, then another, and then follow an advertisement, and before you know it you’ve spend an hour just reading (or trying to find) three articles on a couple of different websites. Sound familiar? RSS provides a digital newspaper of just the content you want, from where you want it, and it’s just sitting there, available when you want it. What the DVR has done for TV, RSS has done for news content – and some.

How it Works

To take advantage of a site’s RSS or “feed” you need an RSS Reader or Aggregator – a program that will check your websites for you, and bring back any new information since your last visit. There are literally dozens of different RSS readers and aggregators – each with their own different features, pros, and cons. To keep it simple, I’m going to talk about the one that i use: Google Reader. Head to reader.google.com and sign in with your Google account. Once it’s set up, you can add your content, (or your “feeds”) one of three ways. You can browse by topic or subject matter – like “technology” or “news” and see a list of sites that provide that kind of content. You can manually type in the address of the site you’re interested in reading into Google Reader and it will add the feed for you. Or, you can click the RSS icon on the site directly and choose “Google Reader” as your aggregator. Voila! As you continue to add feeds to your reader, you’re essentially building your own digital newspaper!

Slow Your Horses

Before you get carried away, one word of caution: go easy on yourself. I currently read and track about 30 different feeds on a daily basis – topics ranging from ministry to technology to finance to blackberry to family. If I checked my feeds several times a day, I could easily spend all day reading and never get anything done. It takes discipline. I read my feeds at one time, in one setting, once a day – just like you would a newspaper.

Anything that requires some additional thought or development gets saved until I have time to review it. RSS allows it to stay there until I’m ready to read it. Because they are in RSS format, I can read them one right after another from the same window in my browser, pictures and all.

As a beginner, I would recommend that you add no more than 5 feeds to your reader at first – allow yourself to get the hang of it before trying to tackle several dozen feeds. Also keep in mind, some sites post dozens of articles each day. Others just do one, or maybe one per week. I remember being really interested in articles I found on Hot Air. But they post dozens of articles each day – it became too much reading; I couldn’t find what I wanted among all that stuff. I had to let them go.

RSS Tips

Remember, this is your personal digital newspaper – don’t feel obligated to continue to stay subscribed if you no longer like the content.

If you find that you frequent a site often, try subscribing to that site’s feed. See if it saves you time.

Add as many feeds as you can handle but remember, technology is supposed to make your life more convenient, not more inconvenient. Too many feeds and you’ll be overwhelmed quickly.

Ready to get started?!? Start here, click the RSS link to the right. Seems appropriate to start with this blog, don’t you think?