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Thing 30 More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

Page history last edited by Ann WS 14 years, 11 months ago

Thing 30. More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

RSS & social bookmarking are two of the best things to happen on the Web. Both are productivity enhancers--and allow you to share what you have found. This Thing introduces ways to use RSS beyond reading blogs/Web sites. Delicious has more features than just saving your bookmarks, too.

 

 

Learn 


The basics of RSS and social bookmarking were in 23 Things On a Stick. In this Thing, we go beyond the obvious uses of both to introduce tools and features that make these productivity tools even more useful.
 

RSS

 

RSS is a great tool for keeping up with professional or personal interests. Subscribing to blogs, news sites, and more and having the updates fed to you saves time. However, your RSS reader can become a drag, too, if you don't keep up and end up feeling "guilty" about not keeping up. Here are some tools that can help make your RSS use more efficient and useful.


Filter Your RSS 

Filtering allows you to focus on those items you are most interested and eliminate a lot of the noise that accumulates in your reader. These services will reduce the number of posts you get based on by tag, keyword, or other parameters you set. 

FeedRinse 
FilterMyRSS
FeedSifter-filters in by keyword
 

Receive RSS via Email, Text, Speech 

These sites will deliver your RSS feeds to your email, phone, or allow you to make a podcast of them so you can listen. 

ZapTXT lets you to monitor RSS feeds for specific keywords and get alerts as soon as there is a new article that includes specified keywords. Alerts can be set to be delivered to email, instant messaging, or mobile phone.

 

Other: 

RSS Forward--Forward your feed to email.  Another one bites the dust. Announcement via Mashable.

FeedMyInbox--Forward to email

 

Spoken Text--Text to speech RSS

RSS to Twitter--Send RSS feed to Twitter

 

Be More Efficient with RSS 

Beyond reading blogs and news, you can use RSS for keeping up on other things: 

ReminderFeed--Send reminder messages to your RSS
Simpletracking.com--Create a custom feed that tracksUPS, Fedex, USPS & DHL packages
RSSCalendar.com-Create a calendar, add events and meetings, and then share a feed for others
.Gov feeds--Keep up with official feeds of the US Government
Traffic.com--Traffic updates for major cities
rssWeather.com--Weather for Minnesota counties 

FeedMySearch-Turn your Google searches into feeds & get updates whenever a new result appears

 

Or, really increase your efficiency with Spreed, a site that will help you speed read your info.

 

Share Your Feeds 

RSS has become more social. Both Google Reader and Bloglines let you recommend or share feeds with others. Another way to share is to publish/print your feeds using a site like Tabbloid.



 

RSS Awareness Day

 

 

 

Celebrate! May 1 is RSS Awareness Day!

 

  

 

 

Delicious


Delicious was one of the favorite tools in 23 Things On a Stick. People realized the great convenience of having access to bookmarks from any computer, anywhere. To get even more out of Delicious, try the networking and search features, along with the widgets that make your Delicious account more visible to your readers. By the way, you may have noticed that del.icio.us has become delicious!

 

Search Delicious

There are a variety of ways to search Delicious from your browser address bar: 

To view bookmarks tagged with a specific keyword, type in:
http://delicious/tag/keyword
 

To view bookmarks tagged with two or more keywords, type in:
http://delicious/tag/keyword+keyword
 

So for example, if you want to look for sites about rss and productivity, type in:
http://delicious/tag/rss+productivity
 

If you want to narrow the search even further, you can include four terms:
http://delicious/tag/rss+productivity+tools
 

If you are looking for the most popular sites in any category, than simply type in:
http://delicious/rss/popular/TAGNAME

So if you are trying to find the most popular sites related to RSS, you would type in:
http://delicious/rss/popular/RSS

 

 

 

In the search box, you have the choice of searching your bookmarks (or click on the tag in the sidebar), my bookmarks, your network's bookmarks, or all of delicious. If you want to limit your search to specific tags, then use the prefix “tag:”. An example, “tag:rss”.

 

Organize

If your tag cloud looks like a huge, disorganized mess, bundle the tags into related categories for easy access. To organize your tags into bundles, click on the “Settings” link in the top right-hand corner. From this page, click on “bundle tags” under the tags heading and start creating your own bundles. 

 

Find New Bookmarks

Navigate to http://del.icio.us/inbox

where you can subscribe to various tags or specific users. This is an excellent way to discover new sites that you may enjoy. Click “subscribe” at the top of most pages to add any user or any tag to your inbox—you can even use combine tags. Anytime a new post arrives that meets your criteria, it appears in your inbox. Based on the preferences you submit, you will be find new items to check out.

 

Other ways to find new sites:

  • Popacular lists the most popular tags on delicious
  • Insuggest uses your username to recommend bookmarks
  • Melange offers a blog post (RSS it) about libraries using delicious
  • player.icio.us lets you enter a tag from either delicious or ma.gnolia (another social bookmarking site) and watch as the most popular Web pages with that tag scroll by

 

Display

Visual learners may prefer FavThumb which offers a thumbnail view of your bookmarked sites. Apparently not anymore!

 

Share

In addition to all that, you can also share your latest del.icio.us bookmarks on your website/blog for all of your readers to enjoy. You do this using Linkrolls and Tagrolls. Linkrolls display your latest del.icio.us bookmarks while tagrolls display all of your del.icio.us tags in a tag cloud.

 

You can add a button to your sites so people can easily bookmark your content.


 

If you embed a Delicious badge in your blog, your readers can see what you bookmark.

 

 

 

Do

Note: OMPL is a common XML data format used to import and export subscription lists between feed readers and aggregators.You may need to do this if you filter your feeds or use some of the other RSS tools. To do this, click on the appropriate link in either Bloglines or Google Reader and follow the instructions. You will not be able to open the file once it is on your computer. That is fine--you only need to be able to find the file when you browse so it can be uploaded.

 

 

RSS

If you do not have an RSS reader account with either Bloglines or Google reader, see Thing 3 for instructions. Set up an account and add some feeds. Install the buttons for making subscribing easier, if your tech staff allows it.

 

1. Read this article Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader from ReadWriteWeb.

 

2. Review the sites listed under learn and try out a few.

3. If you have not added your RSS feeds to your personal homepage or blog, do so.
 

Delicious

If you have not set up a Delicious account, go to Thing 11

. for information and instructions. Register for an account and install the buttons for making bookmarking easier, if your tech staff allows it.

 

1. Watch this video on using Network and Links for You.

 

YouTube plugin error

 

2. Read this article on The Several Habits of Wildly Successful Delicious Users from Slacker Manager.

 

3. Add some people to your network and subscribe to specific tags or users in your Inbox.

4. Add a Tagroll or Linkroll to your blog or Web page to show your bookmarks.

5. Add a badge or button to your blog so people can find your Delicious account & easily bookmark your content.

 

 

Another way to organize bookmarks

6. Look at 43marks.com-create an account, add your bookmarks, and it produces a portal-like page with all your bookmarks in categories. It gives you a URL for access to your bookmarks from any computer.

 

 

Blog Prompts

 

  1. How have you been using your RSS reader? Do you read it regularly?
  2. How have you organized your feeds? Does that help you keep up?
  3. Which features of Delicious do you use most--beyond bookmarking?
  4. Do you have recommendations or suggestions for using either of these tools?

 

 

 

 

For the Curious  (optional)

 

Here are more tools for RSS and Delicious. Take a look and see if there are any that appeal to you.


 

 

 

Comments (6)

Ann WS said

at 9:45 am on May 12, 2009

Looks like FavThumb has joined other Web 2.0 tools in the virtual graveyard!

46thingslibrn said

at 9:36 am on May 12, 2009

I got the same screen as SZRocks when I went to FavThumb. It gave me a page of eBay items.

SZSRocks said

at 7:57 am on Mar 18, 2009

I don't think the FavThumb link is working...it comes up with an eBay thumb page.

Ann WS said

at 10:23 am on Mar 2, 2009

Thanks for the heads up about the FeedRinse link--I fixed itl Try InSuggeset again--it just worked for me. So, who know!:-)

Laura Miller said

at 10:49 pm on Mar 1, 2009

I was unable to access the website for Insuggest. I tried it a few times. :-(

Laura Miller said

at 10:11 pm on Feb 26, 2009

The link for Feed Rinse is incorrect. It should be http://www.feedrinse.com

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