Kingdom Keys Bookmarking Blog

Is your inbox filled up with things that shouldn't be there? Would part of it be of your own making?

Subscribing to email newsletters is fine if the content is relevant to your current interests but why should you use email for something you can readily read in a web browser instead?

The issue of course is how you can keep track of many interesting sources of information without being tied down to the computer all day.

There is a simple technology to cope with this challenge. Instead of scanning scores of favourite websites to hunt for new interesting content by hand use an RSS feed to spot the new releases across a large spectrum of sources.

Competitive intelligence is a must for more and more people - this is a clever way to keep track of who says what in cyberspace. Most decent content management and blog platforms provide their information in RSS format. All you have to do is subscribe to these and you are presented with a combined log of new articles across all the sources you follow.

RSS is a text format and busy executives might use a computerised voice reader to go through it while they are (dare we mention) in the bathroom for instance...

The plot thickens if the original article included graphics or worse videos. Then you would have to click to the original webpage the RSS feed came from.

Nevertheless if people condensed their articles with a good opening paragraph and highlighted their conclusions towards the end you would have a pretty good idea if it is worthwhile to look at the pictures or play the video.

Another use of RSS is for syndication. There can be an automated process where some article on one website suddenly reappears in another website. Plagiarism is a compliment and so you shouldn't be upset if some deemed it worthwhile to augment your exposure.

The software you use to process all your RSS subscriptions is called (you guessed it) an RSS feed reader. It can be standalone or built into a web browser. RSS has only been a standard since 2006 but if it is your job to know what's going on in your field of expertise this would be a way to make your time count and restore your inbox to its primary use - receiving mail from people who have a message just for you; messages to a larger audience can go to RSS instead.

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