Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Trying to Create a Listing of News Feeds

I know I am behind the technology curve on this one; I have just started to figure out feeds--rss and atom feeds. I have tackled learning how to create and use feeds by throwing myself into the software I have available. I have not read any instructions, except for one snippet from Microsoft page. My method is akin to opening a box containing the pieces to a brand new bike and starting to put the pieces together without looking at the instructions. After struggling with learning how to use feeds, I will read a few instructions and best practices and listen to an instructional recorded web conference on the subject. Look for another post that will list some resources I find in to use feeds.

What do I want to "fed" to me? In other words what kind of information do I want to see conveniently and regularly. I think of my daily routine when I come to work. I open my browser to my MSN page (it very well could be my Google page or Yahoo page or Alabama Extension home page). The obvious pages I want to see "fed" to me are the pieces of content that are fed to me via email (i.e, the "Word of the Day", "AU Daily" news, Alabama "Extension Daily", ). Then there are those blogs and news web pages that I found of interest (i.e, ediets.com, CTU blog--internal use only). Also, I have found a few personal blogs of interest (a couple of personal blogs from NC State and from CTU staff pages-also). And then there is the information I have to keep up. For example, I need to watch the wiki changes to my contributions in the eXtension wiki.

As I was trying to add these feeds, I came across a couple of bumps in my path. For starters, the AU Daily News does not have a news feed. Not sure why, but I have asked the AU Communications guru about it. Also, the personal blog pages and the internal CTU blog would not allow me to add the feed to the Google Reader or to the Google Home page. I could, however, add them to the IE7 Feeds page. The difference is that these blogs are only available on the AU domain. Google Reader and Google Home page are outside of the domain.
On the eXtension page(s) I could add my watch list of the FAQ section easily, but I was not able to add the collaboration wiki watch list to my feed list.

Where to put feeds? I have to decide where to put my feeds. At my disposal right now, I can put the feeds in IE7, Google Reader, Google Home Page, and my internal AU business home page. As of right now, I like the way IE7 lists my feeds to the right of the web page I am viewing. I also like the way Google Reader manages read and unread feeds.

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