Feedreaders - general info
Thank you for staying over time in the workshop for the session
on RSS feeds and Feedreaders.
I've added some links below to the feedreaders covered in the
session.
FeedReader is a downloadable feedreader. Instructions for
downloading and using it are available on Sirius. Select the link to
Information Technology>Software. It's very simple to download,
but remember you can only access this reader from the machine
you've loaded it on.
Google Reader is a browser or web-based feedreader accessible
from any computer. First you'll need to register for an account
with Google. For this you need to enter an active email address and
a password. Here's a short YouTube video "RSS in Plain English",
which explains RSS feeds and demonstrates Google Reader.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU]
Netvibes - another web-based
feedreader with many extra features. To make this feedreader
accessible from any computer you'll need to 'Sign in' and enter an
email address and password. The page will already have various
feeds and links but you can delete and add feeds and modules to
your preference.
You might like to have a look at the huge selection of feedreaders
available by going to the Open Directory Project
website.
If you have any questions, comments or feedback about feedreaders
please post your comments.
- Login to post comments
Loading
Comments
I have been using google reader lately and there are a lot of things I like about it. If you've used gmail then you'll get the feel of it instantly. It's an example of the new kinds fo rich web user interfaces which are using advanced javascript techniques commonly refered to as AJAX (or sometimes JSON).
My main problem with google reader is that they haven't sorted out the tagging properly. In some parts of the interface they call them folders and others they are called tags - but you can only have one folder / tag per rss feed. In a true tagging system, you have the feeds in a flat structure but can tag them with multiple keywords and then browse into them through the keywords. So you can catch all you 'funny' blogs through that keyword and get all your 'library' blogs through another but you'd see all your 'funny library' blogs through both tags.
Web based RSS readers tend not to be able to access feeds that are on intranets and restricted areas so are not much good for internal library blogs like this one.
Appreciate this extra information on RSS feeds.