My first thought, when faced with this 'keeping up' thing was: RSS feeds are old news. We use them at work to populate intranet sites.
But then I looked at the 23 Things introduction, and I was amazed by the features of the two apps that were presented.
Zite really intrigued me, with its capability to 'learn' what I like, so I downloaded it from the App store - until it informed me that I need to upgrade OS7. Bummer.
Next stop- Flipper.
I loaded the app, signed up for some science streams, and explored these feeds for a few days. I see that I can also add Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and a multitude more new/more social options that I don't know about yet. But I thought I'd wait to explore the basic magazine feeds before running everything else through one tool.
One I got Flipper up and running, I quickly became immersed in one interesting story after the next - it's so easy to flip! After a while, I realized that there were names (blog names? other sources?) that I have come across on Facebook feeds.
In fact, I'd guess that some of my Facebook friends must peruse some sort of RSS aggregator, and must pick their favorites from similar collections of cool designs, trendy technology, and interesting science facts.
As I looked more closely, I realized that some listed sources like BBC and NYT did not have content available (though I already have a free BBC app on my iPod). Most of the content was engaging, and somewhat fluffy. I found a link to one serious scientific article after reviewing an article called 'ten interesting science facts about cats'. Someone has determined that house cats were first domesticated in China.
My first sense is that most of the news I reviewed is a bit too soft, certainly for my professional reading. Most of what I've been reading is, after all, free content. But if I can tweak the feed and gather some higher caliber RSS sources, it could be really useful even, possibly, for work information.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod.
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