Thing 3: Set Up an RSS Account & Add Feeds

Where to start, where to start...well, before I address some of the "blog prompts," I'd like to mention my RSS failure. After searching for RSS feed icons on other librarians' blogs, I wanted to add one to The Cautious Librarian, rather than asking readers to scroll all the way to the bottom of my blog to the "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)" link. So I looked and Help'd (neither Help on Blogger or Google Reader were very helpful) and finally found a convoluted answer, which, if I were truly devoted and had unlimited time, would probably eventually be useful.

Back to the prompts:

I used Google Reader, mostly because I already had a Google account and my mind is reeling with usernames and passwords, and I didn't particularly want to add another to the mix. In retrospect, Bloglines it is probably a more useful tool, but oh well. Google Reader was satisfactory; I particularly liked the "bundled" blogs, esp. Fun stuff and News (Jon Stewart and BBC News - gotta love 'em). It was also pretty easy to add other blogs from friends and colleagues and other random stuff (searching was easy, but for the most part I just entered the specific web addresses). I was sad, though, that I couldn't use Roger Ebert's webpage as an RSS.

I also would have liked to put a link to my RSS aggregator on my blog, but I didn't see any instructions on the 23 Things page, Blogspot or Google Reader. (Another one of those "if I had unlimited time" tasks...)

Regardless, it was a pretty easy program to manage, and I think it will decrease my use of Explorer Favorites. Not a huge impact at the moment, but I can see that it will become more of a part of my computer usage as I become familiar with this tool.