I don't understand whats the big deal behind them. Im pretty much a tech geek, but i still dont see the fun in just having text news blurbs downloaded, when i can just visit the site.. Share your experiences with RSS, and why it is worth it. .Please
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
I've actually completed a large number of Roadway Soil Surveys over the last 14 years.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
I like RSS because it looks like email, making me appear more productive when I read them at work.
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
What about the RouS'S?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
I don't believe they exist.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I've got more than a few sites I regularly visit throughout the day to see if anything new is there. Now I don't need to, saving me quite a bit of surfing time. Is there a new OSC column? A new Neil Gaiman journal post? Has PvP Online updated? What's up at Whedonesque? What's new at Snopes? All of this and an awful lot more I can tell at a glance. I can also see new releases for eReader, Fictionwise, Project Gutenberg, even Netflix.
If a substantial amount of your web time is spent going to the same sites to look for new updates, RSS feeds can save you a lot of time.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Pseudo-push reading rather than pull; I don't need to explicitly visit places to find out what stories they've posted.
Far, far easier browsing. I can scan the headlines from dozens of sites in seconds, much more quickly and accurately than I could scan the headlines from even a few sites (many headlines on cnn, for instance, hide in their subsection, taking several page views just to look at all of them).
Far more efficient storage and classification of articles and data. My preferred news reader treats RSS items like emails, so I can keep them around in folders and the like for easy later search and retrieval.
Much, much more useful programmatically. Want to write some sort of research tool pulling article data? Instead of trying to narrow in on the articles through some heuristic you'll need to change with every site you look at, you know where to go to find them, and some very relevant metadata about them (title, author, et cetera): the RSS file. Temposs is actually writing an app for AT&T right now which leverages this; his development time is shrunk by orders of magnitude.
Often all I want out of a story is the summary. My RSS reader makes it easy for me to read that, and I don't have to bother with the story.
Some sites update irregularly, such as various webcomics. An RSS reader will let me know when the site's updated so I look then, instead of having to check repeatedly.
And there're more, too, but that's a good start on some reasons.
Posted by Lanfear (Member # 7776) on :
ok.. Chris maybe that will work. Whats a good free RSS reader then?
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
I use Pluck, which attaches itself to your browser and is pretty easy to set up. Haven't tried the others, got this one and was happy.
Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
I like having RSS for the blogs and webcomics that I read. Not everyone updates on a daily basis, and by using BlogRolling as my aggregator, I can see at a glance who did update since the last time I logged in. That way I only hit the sites with new information and not all 87 blogs in my roll (and no that's not an exaggeration...)
And I'll be very very happy when Fahim is ready to release RSS on Blog. =)
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
Um, Goody, Fahim's already implemented RSS feeds on Blog, except for a few minor problems. Check the forums to find out how to set that up.