When and Why I Need RSS Reader
in Personal, Thought, WWW, Words / tags: feed, rss, rss reader, xml
Some people might want to read information by going directly to the original websites. Even nowadays. But, for me I can’t live with that kind of strategy. So, when RSS technology was found around 10 years ago (#1, #2), it might not be popular. But, it was 10 years ago. With the fast information flow, I think RSS is the technology people must experience.
Almost regularly-updated sites offer their contents in RSS format, not only read-from-the-browser format. By this, peole do not have to visit the site only to check whether there are new updates available or not. Thanks to the other technology: RSS Reader or Aggregator! Okey, I will not talk why they should provide RSS for their content or how RSS affects their content readership. Here, I will write some reasons why I need/prefer to use/have RSS readers.
- I only have 24 hours a day. It’s not impossible for me to sit in front of the computer, reading all information. RSS readers keeps the new updates (from sites I subscribed to) for me so that I can read them later.
- I have limited internet connection. I do not expect the sites designed as I wanted. So, other than visiting all sites one by one, loading not-the-real-content elements on a site, I only need to read the real content. When the RSS does not provide me the details and I need those details, I can easily go to the original article sources. Easy.
- I only want to read what I like. News portals, blogs, and other resources sometime provides too-much information. But, I do not need them all. Sometime, I feel lucky to have sites that offers many types of RSS so that I can have flexibility. The control is in my hands. I can read what I need and what I reall like.
Of course, you have your own considerations whether you decide to use RSS reader or not.
This entry receives 3 comments.
toen
and its quite dificult to explain what is RSS to ‘common’ people.
Sep 15, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Thomas Arie
toen, I’ve been there :)
Sep 15, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Organizing My Feed Subscriptions — Orangescale.NET / Thomas Arie Setiawan
[...] I use RSS reader to follow updates from my favorite sites. When I subscribed for the first time, I just loved those sites. I found them useful. But, right now I am thinking of re-organizing my subscriptions. Even the feedreader — I use Google Reader — has ability to keep the headlines, I don’t think that I can follow them all. I tried, and I was failed. [...]
Oct 10, 2008 at 6:42 pm
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