Week 4: RSS Feeds

I'm having trouble getting my head around RSS feeds. Following Preetam Rai's instructions left me very frustrated trying to find sites with feeds. Having wasted a lot of time on step 2, I went to the next step and found that when I copied and pasted the Vogue Knitting address, it worked. The next few I tried though, didn't, and when I looked at the VK feed, the most recent entry was from 2008. I can only assume they no longer offer feeds. I might be missing something, but if I can only access a small number of my favourite sites on Bloglines, I can't be bothered with it. I do think the concept is great though, and will persevere. I've added the sub with Bloglines shortcut to my bookmark toolbar and will try more sites later. I'm surprised the BOM site doesn't have feeds (or does it?) - quick weather updates would be great.

I still haven't found a lot of websites offering feeds, although all the blogs I tried worked. I did find a nice simple tutorial on the ABC website though, and feel more confident that I get what RSS is about, ie being able to go to one site for the latest updates on all selected blogs and websites. I set up a Google Reader account and didn't find it much different to Bloglines.

I like the idea of RSS feeds. I'd happily use it, but am disappointed in the number of sites I use that don't appear to have made feeds available.

Library applications? I assume borrowers use RSS to find out the latest library activities, etc. At our end, I'm not sure how we make sure that feeds are available - I'll let the tech heads take care of that! I don't think I would use RSS for the bibliographic sites I use for reader's advising and HLS selection, as I'm usually looking for specific bibliographic info, not necessarily the most recently added.