RSS and the Boiling Point of the Human Brain

I woke up this morning and I was feeling pretty good about RSS. I fed my cats, starting surfing the web while they ate, and logged in to Blogline instead of clicking through my usual routine of websites. I have to admit that it worked pretty well- even the Seattle times which I thought would be cumbersome as an RSS.

Then I got to work and started the new set of tasks with RSS and my enthusiasm faded...

Going to my favorite sites was WAY easier than searching for them. Syndic8 was too cluttered, too busy- and I didn't like the search results. I liked the subject tabs that Topix uses, but I wouldn't use it to search for RSS sites. I liked the look of the Google Blog search, but I didn't get the kind of results I wanted. I had better luck doing a regular Google search. Bottom line- I didn't find any sites to add using these search tools.

I did have some luck with Feedster, but again the search results weren't too hot. I was perturbed that it defaulted to date instead of relevance. My personal preference is to find what I’m looking for and then check the date. I found a site I liked, erroneously closed the window, typed in my search again and the results weren't repeated! This may be a occupational job hazard, but if I do a search once and get a result, and I repeat the exact search in a matter of minutes, I shouldn't have to spend another 5 minutes using different search terms to re-find the blog I wanted. This made me go grrrrrr......Overall, I was happiest with my results from Blogline. The results were good and the page reasonably uncluttered compared to some of the other search tools.

Then I started to look for library themed feeds. I searched in all of the above, and ended up using two from the 27things list. I thought Library Bytes and Librarian.net were the most interesting. Again, I wasn’t impressed with the search results; most of the content was unappetizing.

Upon looking at my blogline account I now have 14 feeds being updated. I have to admit to feeling a bit overwhelmed. I don't know that I really want to read through that much daily. Only time will tell.