Week 3 has covered RSS (Really Simple Syndication).  Topics included RSS aggregators/readers, RSS feeds and how to find RSS feeds.

I currently have a desktop based RSS Reader which was set up so I could check the website updates were working correctly.  However, as it is tied to my desktop, I haven’t really used it.  However, with the flexibility offered by the web-based RSS readers I became more interested in trying it out.

We were offered two readers – Bloglines or Google Reader.  I opted for Google Reader after reading an article which compared the two.  (http://lifehacker.com/software/google-reader/geek-to-live–from-bloglines-to-google-reader-205786.php).

I found Google Reader easy to use and started to set up some feeds suggested in the Web 2.0 course.  I quickly discovered that some of the suggested links were filling up my reader so deleted them (the news feeds).  I think for any content that is as fast changing as that, I will just visit the website.  For those websites that don’t change so frequently, say every two days or longer, it is more efficient for me to find out via the RSS reader when new content has become available.

I will keep on adding more feeds to my reader as I come across suitable websites as I do prefer going to one place for all my information (and have it come to me) and I am going to transfer my table of contents alerts to the RSS reader instead of my email.