Thing 5 -- Subscribe to Blogs Using RSS Feeds

The first time I researched RSS (before I started this class) I just didn’t “get” it. I understand it now, but it’s taken me several hours and a lot of false starts trying to get it to work. First of all, I initially created the folders in Bloglines under Playlists and had trouble getting a subscription to work. I finally figured out I did it wrong (after watching the video again) and made the folders again under Feeds. It took me several attempts to finally get a RSS feed to save in the right location. I tried the three ways to save a RSS feed but couldn’t find a subscribe button on Will Richardson’s blog, so I moved on to try the second and third ways, which worked. I then went back and used the Bloglines button to add the Richardson blog. I, too, like the last way to add a blog to my feeds. I discovered that some sites that had a subscribe button didn’t give me the option of choosing Bloglines, so I decided it’s much easier and simpler to use the Bloglines link to subscribe to them. That’s how I subscribed to all the others sites.

I think that using RSS is going to be very helpful for reviewing current content on both school-related and personal websites. I discovered that it’s far too easy to find blogs to subscribe to, so I had to curb my enthusiasm for adding too many sites until I discover the ones that I truly will want to look at often. I guess that will be a process of trial and error as I add and later perhaps delete blogs from my list of feeds. In the meantime, I like the sites I have and plan to go back and add a few that I discovered when I was doing Things 2 and 3. Two cool sites that I discovered that I like mostly for fun are Boing Boing and Cool Tools.