Saturday, February 28, 2009

#9. Finding Feeds

Listen to the podcast!


Introduction
Now that you have a newsreader (your Bloglines account) you can begin subscribing to the newsfeeds that interest you.
  • When visiting your favorite websites -- look for news feed icons that indicate the website provides feeds. Often a feed icon will be displayed somewhere in the navigation bar of the site.
  • Use Blogline's Search tool - Bloglines search tool lets you search for news feeds in addition to posts, citations and the web. Use the Search for Feeds option to locate RSS feeds you might be interested in.
  • Other Search tools that can help you find feeds:
    * Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlet RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.
    * Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
    * Technorati - Technorati is a popular blog finding tool that lets you search for blogs. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging tools, Technorati Blog Search can help you find RSS feeds for topic-specific blogs you may be interested in.
Discovery Resources
Feed Me: a gentle introduction to Internet feeds (a tutorial) http://www.palinet.org/rss/toti/tsstutorial.htm

Discovery Exercises
1. To get a feel for subscribing to feeds, try these:
  • SPL!
  • Subscribe to your favorite co-workers’ feeds. This is as easy as typing the blog URL into the subscribe field in Bloglines. In the “Feeds” tab in the left screen pane, click on “Add."
  • CNN
  • Unshelved (comic strip about libraries)

2. Use Blogline's Search tool to search for newsfeeds.

3. Create a post in your blog about this exercise.