Are you one of those people who checks news websites everyday? Several blogs? Downloads podcasts? Searches frequently in PubMed, PsycINFO or Web of Science? Are you tired of navigating through all those bookmarks to get to the same websites everyday?
You may benefit from an RSS Feed Reader (aka RSS aggregator).
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS Feed Readers allow you to organize all of your most frequently visited sites that are “web feeds” in one place. By a web feed, I mean a page which updates frequently – and a page to which, as a user, you can actually “subscribe.” The feed reader or aggregator is essentially a webpage which automatically shows updates of all of YOUR favorite webpages.
I use an RSS aggregator for several things:
*view blog updates
*check on frequently run PubMed, PsycINFO and Web of Science searches
*view favorite journal Table of Contents updates (Science, Nature, Cell, ES&T etc)
*view New York Times Science headlines
To learn more about RSS feeds, read this article from the New York Times.
To choose a free aggregator, read this review from About.com.
Next, we will set up a Bloglines account – and start adding feeds to our page!
