Posts Tagged 'rss'

Keeping Up with the News, 2011 Style

Published November 2, 2011 internet Closed
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Earlier today I did ‘a Scobleizer’, and deleted all of my RSS subscriptions from Google Reader. The decision to start fresh was growing in me for a few weeks now, and Scoble’s post from this morning only affirmed my decision.

Some prefix is required here, as I haven’t written about that topic in a while – the distribution and consumption of news. With the ‘Big 3’ in mind – Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and adding Flipboard and HitPad to the mix, I think I’ve reached some conclusions on where I turn to read what, which also seems to coincide with current public perception:

  • Google+ is where serious discussion takes place, and valuable opinions and insights are shared. My good friend Hillel Fuld is a strong believer in Google+, mainly for the vibrating discussion that takes place. If you got your circles right, you’re in for a treat, content-wise, any time of day.
  • Facebook is where the fun stuff is shared, racking up Likes and Shares all around. I might find there an interesting Share, but most of the time – I find myself ‘judging’ the content based on the photo used.
  • Twitter is tricky. Among all other social networks, Twitter is the only one that actually broke psychical boundaries, making it easier for people like me to interact and tweet with people like Robert Scoble, Dave Morin, Daniel Bedingfield, Ashton Kutcher and many others. Having said that, Twitter still needs to find a way to deal with all the noise. Other than lists.
  • I’d also mention LinkedIn, which made a huge leap news-wise when they released their new iPhone app, which includes the ‘Updates’ tab, for top shared news from my network. Hands down my favorite app for hot stories.

So now my RSS reader is clean (actually was clean for two hours or so), and I’ve already started adding feeds to it, in small doses: Dave Winer, Scoble, Boston.com’s The Big Picture, Google Android Developer Blog, and a few others. It’s taking shape again, but I think I’ll have 20 at the most (compared with 80+ I had last time). With the built-in Google+ integration, I hope the new Reader will help Google regain a place on my list.

What’s your favorite tool or social network for catching up with the news? How many feeds do you keep track after? Shout back here, on Google+ or on Twitter.

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Last but not least: This is the 3rd post I’ve written from my iPad, and I do think it’s time I share a few thoughts on my shiny new gadget and how I use it. Stay tuned, more to come.

RSS is (still) alive

Published May 7, 2009 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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After a busy week I sat down catching up with my RSS feeds, when these posts popped up, both talking about the ‘death of RSS‘ and the ‘re-birth of twitter as the new RSS‘. While I agree to some extent with both Orli Yakuel and Steve Gillmor that twitter definitely changed the way we consume and search for content, I disagree with their bottom-lines.
RSS is still in the game, and its ‘TOD‘ announcement was premature.

Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed – whatever they grew from, they morphed into a realtime CMS for the emerging media. Twitter, not RSS, became the early warning system for new content. (Steve Gillmor)

And Orli:

Bottom line, you can’t have a live conversation from within your RSS reader. Today, with Twitter, you see links posted by your friends and can immediately create a discussion around it. The web was never as accessible as it is today. (Orli Yakeul)

Twitter has definitely changed the way we communicate with each other, much like cellphones or SMS did several years ago. A simple service, that is considered less-formal (but used for business daily), with a cool GUI and multiple integration points – has hooked us all, and got us thinking in 140 chars sentences.

RSS is still alive because:

  • Not missing the action. Since leaving IBM, we have only 1 laptop at home (will change soon), my fiancee’s – I use it when she doesn’t. One of the things that bug me about twitter, is information overload. True, I choose who to follow, I create groups and searches in tweetdeck, but still, how many of you scroll down the column to see ‘the past’? I’m guessing very few. Twitter is about now, right now. If you missed it, it’s old news, not interesting.
  • Various integration points. Same with twitter, RSS is accessible from a variety of applications: messaging (even IM), browsers, dedicated software, mobile and more.
  • RSS will die when blogs will. RSS was born for blogs and news sites, and makes it easier to track stories and articles, in a slight delay. I first came to know Orli, Kfir, Lior, Ahuvah, Gal and the gang from their blog – which were (and still are) written elegantly, clear and to the point, with their own professional angle on things. The 3 tabs I always have open in FF are GReader, Facebook and Gmail.

Twitter will kill RSS in the future because:

  • Micro-blogging will eventually rule. Don’t know if at 140 chars or more, but I definitely see a change in the read/write culture – people are talking in updates, even children. Try having a conversation with a teenager (<18)>
  • Topics and not sites. If I had to choose one important change twitter introduced – it’s the fact we’re starting to track topics and not sites (like RSS). Obviously you can create a RSS for twitter search, but there’s nothing like the source. The hashtags (#) have made it easier for us to start a topic (tlvmarathon) and track a story (swineflu).
  • Conversation. This is the heart of web 2.0, in any slide and presentation ever written about this term. We are no longer consuming content, we are conversing about content. And while GReader lets you ‘share on facebook’, ‘add to del.icio.us‘ and others, it does not compare to the instant discussion twitter enables us to do.

That’s my opinion. You’re welcome to comment with yours.

Mid 2Q Resolutions for a Connected Blogger

Published May 7, 2007 Uncategorized Closed
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Google added some time ago a new cool feature to its Google Reader web based (of course) application, Google Trends.
Basically, it tells you everything you want to know about your reading trends: when you read, which feeds, for how long, how many, which day/hour, etc. There are some nice graphs as well, for those who like results displayed in a colored matrix..

I copy-pasted 2 charts I feel summarize my experience so far, and those are which day and which hour I get my fix of feeds.. Surprisingly, or not, Sundays are my preferred reading days. Surprise because in Israel, Sunday is a working day, the first of the week, not part of the weekend. I can only assume that less work is getting done on Sunday.. The weekdays are roughly the same, just over 150 items per day.. I don’t read all of them, some I just scroll through
In the next chart you can see my reading hours. I would expect mornings and just after lunch, but it appears that mornings are just not my thing. Again, no surprise there as I’m not a morning person.. Noon is almost a peak, probably because I like to have some new gossip to talk about over lunch.. 🙂 Another interesting fact – I go to sleep late !! very late! It appears that I read 150 items between midnight and 2 a.m. ! wow…
Couple of action items for self, after this short analysis:

  • Stop working over the weekends. The week is long enough, and my office will still be there coming Sunday. I really tend to work over the weekends, and I do want to cut it down.. not healthy.
  • Go to sleep earlier. Not early, we’re not 6th graders, but earlier. Like midnight, 1 a.m at the latest. It’s hard, as my better half is usually awake, working her best in those little hours of the night, but I will make an effort.
  • Working evenings. With the laptop age, that isn’t new, the office is a very relative term. It can be your office-office, your home-office, your coffee shop-office, your shopping mall-office – no end in sight.. So, for the past week or so, I decided to keep my laptop in its hand bag, and not take it out when I reach home.. Nothing is that urgent..

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.. you can call them “Mid 2Q Resolutions for a connected blogger” items. Bit long, but has a nice ring to it…

Welcome to my blog

Published January 19, 2007 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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Welcome!
I wanted to open a blog for some quite time now, as part of this ‘web 2.0’ trend that’s flooding the web and the IT/Business scene, but there was always something else in my to-do list. I did find the time to open a blog using my employer platform, an internal blog, but after Time Magazine chose ME as Person of The Year 2006 – that was like a sign. Not divine or anything, just a sign.

Well, what’s another blog? already there are over 55 million of them, so what is one more blog?

So, sit back, relax, RSS, and enjoy.

In the meantime, some subscriptions you can find in my Google Reader:
Life Hacker
Engadget and Engadget Mobile
Irving Wladawsky-Berger
Anecdotot (in Hebrew)
Pronet Advertising
bLaugh (my daily smile)



Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.