Thing 3. Set Up an RSS Account & Add Feeds

I've been using RSS feeds for a long time. I like to add them to my email client, Thunderbird. That way I can catch up on my email and my feeds at the same time. I do also have them setup in Google newsreader as a backup, but rarely use it to actually read them.

I'm a systems administrator and one way I use RSS is at work. Whenever we make a change to a server, we post to an internal blog. I use the RSS feed for that blog to stay up to date with what is going on. Its also great for historical purposes. When was it that we made that change to the mail gateways? I'll just search for "mail gateway" in the blog and see all the related blog posts. A lot handier than the paper logbook used back in the old days.

I do read a few library blogs which a linked below.

Plainview Public Library
Library Technology in Texas
Library Web Chic
open-ils blog
And I pull three RSS feeds from SELCO. I do the "Regional News", "SELCO Librarian", and "Structures". I'm not going to link those as they can all be found from their front page.

I also pull a few feeds from /. and Lifehacker. I have a few other technology feeds, some from blogs of friends and family in other states, and my current favorite online comic xkcd.com.
I like RSS feeds because I don't have to go around polling everyone's sites to see if something is new. And I treat it similarly to how I go through my email. Deleting stuff that doesn't look interesting, reading some now, and flagging others to be read later. All said and done I have about 35 feeds so I can't read them all, but I can scan through them and find interesting stuff in all of them.