rss feeds

While talking to someone today, I realized how far we had come in terms of the way we consume information online.

We used to be destination driven.  Which is say, we used to visit sites directly, bookmarking sites that we visited frequently or going straight to the url.  RSS changed all that by pushing news out.  The services like delicious made the task of bookmarking thousands of interesting links online more manageable, by taking it to the cloud.

Still, we are constantly looking for better ways to reach more information that’s pertinent to our lives – both to enhance our professional life, and to keep us entertained.  I still go to a few sites directly both on the web or through my mobile – a few of the mainstream sites where quality and quantity are consistent.  Everything else I read online comes to me through one of a number of ways.

For breaking news, one of my favourite sources is BNO News, which also comes with a highly recommended iPhone app that I haven’t had the chance to try out yet.  It’s short, it’s to the point, it’s consistently 10-15 minutes ahead of sources like the CNN and BBC.  As far as keeping up with fact-based, time-sensitive, large-scale events, this is nothing different than the hourly bulletin we used to get on TV.  Only it’s on demand, and takes 10 seconds to scan.

I still spend a significant amount of time scanning through my RSS reader, though I wish there could be something better.  The quantity of content I get in a reader is sometimes too overwhelming in quantity and underwhelming in quality, with the number of unread feeds easily surpassing 1,000 if my account is not scanned for a day or two.  To keep this under control, I’ve set up a number of folders to organize feeds by topic, which can then be prioritized when reading.  I’ve also unsubscribed from a number of high-post sites. Time is limited, either it goes off the radar completely, or I go to the site directly.  Read more...