October 31, 2007
What's Hot with RSS - Steve Cohen (Internet Librarian 2007)
I could be in trouble. Steve Cohen talks really fast. So bear with me. I'll type as fast I can. Wait, I don't need to take notes. Here's Steve's presentation - http://stevenmcohen.pbwiki.com/IL2007 I'm just going to sit back and listen. Thanks, Steve!
IL2007
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)June 14, 2007
RSS - It Doesn't Get Much Easier than This
Do you need to explain RSS to a librarian, attorney, friend, relative or casual acquintance? Don't bother. Just direct them to this 4 minute video by Lee LeFever of Common Craft called RSS in Plain English. He tells you what you need to know to get started with RSS, no more, no less.
It's an interesting little production. He doesn't use PowerPoint or screen captures, instead, he taped his hand and web pages on paper, using a marker for emphasis. It reminds me a bit of the Scott Adams (Dilbert) presentation at SLA, which was, of course, very entertaining, and was also the first time in many years that I've seen anyone use an overhead projector. During the question and answer period someone asked Scott if this unconventional and, some would say, outdated, presentation medium was a negative statement on PowerPoint. I don't have his answer verbatim, but he said something to the effect that he thought is was more "live" to see him physically move and swtich the transparencies.
I'm still wondering where they found the projector....maybe Ebay?
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)January 03, 2007
RSS Tutorial for Law Librarians
If you're reading this blog, you're probably already familiar with RSS. But if not, here's a couple of great resources for you to help you get started.
Tom Mighell & Dennis Kennedy wrote an article for Law Practice Today called "RSS Resources You can Use: Automated Web Surfing for Lawyers." It's a very nice introduction to RSS, and lays out all the basics.
If you're more of a visual person, and my guess is that most of us are, you might also like to take a look at the RSS Tutorial for Law Librarians, by Jason Eiseman, Computer Automation Librarian at Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt. In a little over a half an hour, you can find out all you need to know to get started with RSS.
No more excuses!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)July 24, 2006
RSS Feeds for Current Awareness
St. Louis continued...After spending all that time at the Newsgator booth, I became a woman on a mission. Here we were, in the same convention center with many of the leading legal publishers; but which ones are offering RSS feeds for their content? I canvassed the exhibit hall, and while I didn’t visit every booth, I found some serious progress is being made on the RSS front.
First, there’s BNA. Their email newsletters are very popular among the attorney population. And yes, their information is soon to be offered via RSS. They can even create keyword specific feeds that searches across all the publications you subscribe to, and aggregate the result in a separate feed. Contact your rep for more information.
Lexis, in their Publisher product, and Westlaw, with Westlaw Watch, give you the option of RSS feeds. If you’re using these tools, these can be a significant source for RSS data.
Westlaw is also incorporating RSS into their Docket Watch product. An RSS feed could be perfect for keeping up with developments in that area.
What about CCH? Not so much. Heck, they’ve only just started sending selected newsletters out by email. It may take them a while….
During my rounds, I suggested RSS feeds to any publisher offering current awareness tools. RSS feeds are not technically difficult to create, so it’s within easy reach of any publisher large or small. Once the demand is there, I daresay so will the feeds.
I’m sure there were more, but that’s the RSS news I was able to glean from the exhibit hall floor this time around. You can thank me later, when all the news that’s fit to print is being delivered seamlessly to your attorneys desktop.
July 13, 2006
Newsgator - Deliver News to Your Enterprise
I had good intentions. I had planned to blog regularly while at AALL in St. Louis. But things just got too busy, as they tend to do at such events. Besides, you really wouldn't want to read anything I might have written after a long day at the exhibit hall. Still, I have a few of what I think are items of significance to discuss. Better late, than not at all!
Newsgator was is the exhibit hall this year, and that’s where I headed first. I had a strategy. I knew I wanted a thorough demo, so I skipped the first program under the correct assumption that the exhibit hall wouldn’t be busy. It’s a good thing, too. Things were relatively quiet, and I spend a good hour looking at Newsgator’s enterprise product.
Newsgator’s RSS reader has been around for a while. It integrates nicely with Outlook, adding folders for RSS feeds in the Outlook folder structure, and is a popular software choice. But I have bigger fish to fry. My fantasy is to make Newsgator the delivery method of choice for all of the firm’s electronic current awareness newsletters, alerts, internal information and outside third-party content. It looks like it might be up to the task. Email alerts could become a thing of the past; forget managing Outlook subscriptions lists. With Newsgator, attorneys could easily subscribe and unsubscribe to the RSS feeds of choice. Newsgator offers an administrative interface to handle your RSS offerings. Feeds can be pushed to a particular group or user, and selected ones can be made mandatory. You can even create topic folders that will combine more than one RSS feed into a single, readable display.
So, for example, if you have an alert running on the name of your firm or organization, you can include a Lexis Publisher feed for general news, and Westlaw Watch for legal news, and offer both RSS feeds in a single folder, so that they can be reviewed separately, or together. And all of this would happen within Outlook, in a folder that looks just like another email folder. Feeds can also be optimized for viewing on handheld devices, such as Blackberries.
If you’d like to provide more focused news, you can choose to set up special keyword searches to run across all your available RSS feeds, collecting that information in to a custom topical feed. For example, you could create a special search on Sarbanes Oxley, to collect news headlines from your available RSS feeds, and presents them as one specialized feed. You can also easily create your own RSS feeds with Newsgator.
There’s a chicken and egg problem, of course. While there’s a lot of information available via RSS, certainly not everything is there yet, so the transition to all RSS alerting can’t happen all at once. On the other hand, Newsgator offers a function that allows you to receive an email and include that email in a Newsgator folder. (This is good for listserv email as well.) But still, any non-RSS email alerts wouldn’t be optimized for RSS, and wouldn’t be as easily scanned by the user. The other problem is that Newsgator can only handle straight text emails, and won’t render html email. That may be remedied in the near future.
It’s one thing to talk about the future, but the burning question, at least in my mind, is what exactly is available in RSS now? Ah, that’s the subject of my next blog.
November 13, 2005
Kebberfegg - Keyword Based RSS Feed Generator
Keyword RSS feeds are a powerful tool. For example, you can create an RSS feed in Yahoo News to be alerted to new articles with your search terms, as they're published. These feeds are comparable to news alerts that you can pay good money for out there in the for-fee world.
There are many news sites that offer keyword RSS feeds, but I didn't really know how many until I saw Kebberfegg, a tool created by Tara Calishain of ResearchBuzz.
To use Kebberfegg, just type in your search, select the kind of news you're looking for, and Kebberfegg will provide you with dozens of keyword feeds based on your terms. No need to visit each news site to find their RSS option; they're provided to you, quickly and easily.
This tool is a convenient way to create different keyword feeds, but it's also helpful to simply browse the lists to remind you of the many sources for current news.
[Spotted on Inter-Alia]
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)August 28, 2005
The Power of RSS
Did you know that Tim Stanley, formerly of Findlaw fame, offers a new RSS service called Auto Recalls? Or that there is a web site out there called PatentMojo that helps patent professionals create watchlists for patent searches, using RSS feeds, of course?
Then you (and me both!) obviously don't know everything there is to know about RSS. But Robert J. Abrogi does, and he summarizes for us in his Law Technology News article, The Power of RSS.
If you're having difficulties convincing your co-workers or boss about the importance of RSS, just print this article out for him/her. It ought to do the trick.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)August 21, 2005
Order From Chaos Via RSS
RSS is really such a simple concept. Publish RSS feeds, then let those that are interested subscribe to them. No fuss, no muss, and so far, no spam. Not much in the way of ads yet, either, though that's likely to change.
Just as intranets became popular after the introduction of the web, businesses are starting to see how RSS feeds can be an efficient way increase communication within an organization without increasing employee's email burden. InformationWeek's article, Order from Chaos Via RSS, explains how businesses such as Disney and Microsoft are implementing RSS.
RSS feeds are handy because they can be automatically created when new content is added to an application or web page, reducing the need for employees to wander the intranet looking for updates, or digging through emails trying to find the really important stuff.
Watch for RSS feeds to really take off as the tools to read them become more commonplace. Start asking for RSS capability from vendors now.
July 19, 2005
RSS Goes Corporate
RSS has really taken off over the last couple of years. Yet there's still a relatively small percentage of people actually using RSS on a daily basis and few law firms have embraced RSS as a delivery mechanism for internal or external information. But that's going to change, probably sooner rather than later. All that's needed is an enterprise approach to RSS, putting the capability to read RSS files on every desktop in your organization.
I always thought that RSS would really take off once Microsoft incorporated an RSS reader into Outlook. There's no hint of that on the horizon, but Newsgator has filled the gap. Newsgator's RSS reader integrates with Outlook, putting RSS feeds right where they belong. Newsgator is now positioning their product in the enterprise market, according to a Red Herring article, RSS Goes Corporate.
Certainly the Newsgator strategy seems to make sense, though other players in the industry, namely, PubMed's CTO, Bob Wyman, writes in his blog, "I've regularly argued against PubSub investing too much in aggregator development since it is inevitable that Microsoft would eventually blow away whatever we created." It's hard to dispute that logic.
Pluck investor Allen Morgan also has an interesting point concerning enterprise newsreaders. According to the article, he states "It's a mistake to sell newsreaders straight to the enterprise at this point." He believes that grassroots adoption is the only way drive the corporate buying cycle. "When the CIO is the last person not to have it, the CIO decides to buy a license." There's definitely a certain logic to that point of view as well.
Reports that the upcoming version of Internet Explorer will include an RSS reader are encouraging though I can't help but think that integrating into Outlook, as Newsgator does, makes more sense.
At any rate, it's hard to know exactly when RSS will hit the corporate world big time. But once it does, we'd better be ready!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 10:03 PM | Comments (1)May 05, 2005
Factiva RSS Feeds
There's good news and bad news. The good news is that Factiva has announced that they will provide Factiva track folders via RSS to subscribers at no additional charge. The bad news is that it appears that this will only work on Newsgator. Can somebody explain to me why they would require the use of Newsgator??? I'm missing something obvious, I'm sure. Maybe it's a security issue? Help me out here...
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)March 16, 2005
Feeds, Feeds and more Feeds
The number of RSS feeds continue to grow in leaps and bounds. Here's just a few sources for feeds that have cropped over over the past few months.
Law Journal Feeds from Washington & Lee Law School - Currently includes 550 journals.
U.S. newspapers with RSS feeds, organized by state.
Directory of Corporate RSS Feeds
Supreme Court opinions RSS feeds from Legal Information Institute. There's an RSS feed for today's cases, as well as recent opinions.
[Spotted on Robert Ambrogi's LawSites]
February 21, 2005
Web Email via RSS
I was wondering just last week which email web service would be the first to offer RSS feeds. Yahoo, perhaps? Hotmail? Ah, I should have known. How about Google's Gmail!
But we're not there quite yet. Though this article is from October, I still don't have a button for an RSS feed on my account.
But still, it looks like we're closer! Now if only Gmail would pick up POP email from my other email accounts, I'd be ready to give it a real test!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)Future Tense on RSS in Libraries
The Seattle Public Library is offering RSS feeds that will alert users to overdue books and notify them when a new book is available by their favorite author according to NPR's Future Tense, Libraries Get Hip to RSS.
Sirsi is pointed to as the first library automation vendors to offer RSS feeds with their catalog software. Any search that can be run in the Sirsi catalog can be saved as an RSS feed.
Also quoted is Steven Cohen, of Library Stuff, who points out that while there is limited demand for RSS feeds right now, it will likely increase significantly in the near future. How much better to be in front of the curve rather than behind it!
And once RSS is more commonplace, both public and private libraries could deliver new book lists on specific topics as customized RSS feeds. Let's just hope the REST of the library automation vendors catch up with Sirsi.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)January 09, 2005
Feeding the News Junkie's Habit
Genie Tyburski has updated her Law Office Computing article, Feeding the News Junkie's Habit, discussing how lawyers can use RSS newsfeeds for delivering relevant and timely news.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)December 09, 2004
Monitor New Patent Applications via RSS
While you might expect news and search sites to offer RSS feeds, there's other content that is quite suitable for RSS as well. For example, if you'd like to monitor new, published patent applications, try FreshPatents.com where you can grab a feed for all new applications by industry, inventor, location or agents. You can also sign-up for a weekly email alert with new applications that match the keywords you select.
It just goes to show that just about any site that publishes new information on a regular basis could use RSS feeds to keep readers/researchers coming back.
[Spotted on RSS in Government]
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)October 31, 2004
RocketNews Offers RSS Keyword Searches
RocketNews is now offering RSS keyword feeds. Just run a search, then select the orange XML button for the feed. Add the feed to your aggregator, and future search results will display.
The XML button has been showing up on RocketNews search results for some time, but I could never get the feeds to work. So if you tried before without success, you might want to give it a second look. It's working for me now!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)October 17, 2004
News RSS Feeds - MSNBC & Law.com
If you're a news junkie, you'll like MSNBC's new RSS feeds. You can opt for top news, politics, health, business, entertainment and more. In a moment of weakness I signed up for politics. Who needs to watch the news anymore? I'm happy to avoid the latest slow-speed chase which inevitable appears on our local stations.
If you're more interested in what's happening in the legal community, you can now opt for Law.com's Newswire via RSS. [Spotted on Virtual Chase]
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)September 21, 2004
Using RSS to Create New Services
According to Darlene Richter, (Using RSS to Create New Services, Online, July/August 2004) RSS isn't just for Internet content. It can also be a useful way to keep employees within your organization appraised of customized news and intranet content as well. You can display RSS news feeds on your intranet, or, if your audience uses RSS aggregators, offer feeds to alert users of the status of projects, monitor web statistics or otherwise replace the "notifications" that are now sent out as email alerts.
There are two ways to use RSS feeds internally. They can, of course, simply be made available to any employee with a newsreader, or they can be used to publish fresh content on your site by pulling current news items into an intranet page. Darlene includes examples of scripts that can be installed locally to display RSS feeds as HTML, and discusses option for internal news. As she points out, any information of an "episodic nature" is fair game to be delivered via RSS.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)September 06, 2004
PubSub Offers Free SEC Alerts
I've noted in a previous entry that there is a for-fee RSS alert service available for new SEC filings from Edgar Index, but Inter Alia has found a free one at PubSub.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)August 10, 2004
Another Source for Keyword-Specific RSS News Feeds
Most of us researcher-types agree that RSS feeds that display the results of a keyword search are the most useful application of RSS technology. Tara Calishain's ResearchBuzz, points to another source for such feeds, Allheadlinenews.com.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:25 PM | Comments (0)August 09, 2004
All Things Considered...Now Available via RSS
For those NPR fans out there, NPR has expanded their RSS offerings to include segments such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Fresh Air and more.
Spotted on therssweblog.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)July 25, 2004
RSS from NPR
Spotted on Library Stuff, NPR is now offering 5 national, and 7 local, RSS feeds for NPR content. I'm excited...the only thing I miss about driving the congested Southern California freeway system to work is NPR. And that's not enough to get me off the train and back in the car!
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)July 18, 2004
RSS News Feeds for Law
RSS feeds are spreading and multiplying. Keeping track of them is likely to get harder. For a continuously updated list of sources for finding law-related RSS feeds, and a good selection of the higher-quality RSS feeds available, see Genie Tyburski's RSS News Feeds for Law.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)July 05, 2004
New York Times Offers RSS Feeds
Previously available via Userland, the New York Times is now offering its own RSS feeds.
[Spotted on the Shifted Librarian]
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)May 24, 2004
Time Magazine & ESPN Offer RSS
RSS news content is being added by the minute. Those words were no sooner out of my mouth (figuratively speaking) when Time Magazine announced their new RSS feeds. The categories are quite generic, i.e., "Top Stories", but tracking the most viewed or most emailed stories sounds intriguing.
If you prefer sports to current events, but can't stay glued to the TV all day, try the new RSS feeds from ESPN.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)May 12, 2004
RSS Tutorial Part IV: News, News & More News
Blogs are nice and all, but what really got me hooked on RSS was the ability to monitor commercial news sources, and even better, to receive regularly updated, customized search results automatically via RSS feeds. You can get current news from a particular publication, by subject area, or keyword.
I've been experimenting with RSS news delivery for a while now, so I thought I'd share the information I've found with you. I will continue to add sources to this entry as I find them.
News Feeds by Publication
The New York Times, Boston Globe and BBC are just a few of the major newspapers available via RSS.
For more, see:
- Technology at Harvard Law - Feeds
- Radio Userland's list of the top 100 most subscribed-to RSS feeds.
- NewsisFree List by Name (Duck, here come the popup ads!) I spotted several law-related ones including CNN: Law, Top Legal Headlines from Findlaw, and many more.
You can, of course, simply visit your favorite news web site, and look around for any mention of RSS or the telltale orange icon.
News Feeds by Topic
Yahoo News offers RSS feeds galore. Categories available via RSS are listed on the Yahoo RSS page. Click on an icon for the category of news you want to receive, then cut and paste the URL into your aggregator.
Topix carries feeds for local news, and many other very detailed categories. To find topics of interest, just run a keyword search and Topix will display the related possibilities. To see an example, take a look at my Bloglines shared feeds, click on KM, and check out the feed from Topix on knowledge management.
Reuters recently introduced RSS feeds on several fairly generic topics such as health, science and sports.
Moreover's category feeds are a well-kept secret. Their list of pre-built categories is hard to find, so you might want to bookmark the page. Or just come back here when you need it.
NewsIsFree offers a number of RSS feeds on different topics. You can search by category, name, date or language. You also have the option to create a feed for areas like "Top News", but I tried that out just to test it and had thousands of articles show up everyday. I've changed it to the Society-Librarians category. We'll see how that works!
If you visit NewsisFree, be forewarned, the pop-up ads are a tad on the aggressive side, so you might want to turn on your pop-up blocker. You can pay a subscription fee to get rid of those nasty ads and also create custom feeds and news searches. So I guess it has to be said, news isn't really free.
Specialty News Feeds
RSSQuotes tracks stock prices.
EDGAR Index is a subscription-based service offering customizable RSS-based alerts of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. They offer a handful of free RSS feeds, in addition to their pay service ($4.95 per month).
PC World RSS Feeds offers a general tech trends feed, as well as feeds that monitor their most popular hardware and software purchases from their Product Finder.
CNET's News.com covers technology-related news. The RSS feeds offered are quite general, for example, personal technology. They do offer keyword email alerts, so hopefully more customizable RSS feeds will be along shortly.
News Searches
This is where the real power is, creating custom news searches on keywords, company names or anything else you want to track. This area is also a moving target right now with limited options from the traditional sources (with a few notable exceptions.) But where there's a vacuum, there are always people who will try to fill it. As you'll see, there are RSS fanatics out there creating tools to create RSS search feeds when they aren't offered by the sources themselves. Just be aware that these tools could disappear at any time.
Yahoo! News Search RSS URL Generator - Some nice gentleman named Jerry has created a page that will build a Yahoo RSS feed from a Yahoo News search. Put your search terms in the box, grab the URL from the resulting page, and you're good to go. Well, almost. When I click on the heading for the search in Bloglines, I go directly to the complete Yahoo search result. If I click on an individual item, I get an error message. BUT, and I realize this isn't elegant, if you go up to the URL that generates the error, and take out the first part before the Yahoo address, it will work.
Moreover News - Construct a RSS feed with a ticker symbol or keyword by substituting "keyword" in the following URL with your search term: http://p.moreover.com/cgi-local/page?k=keyword&o=rss. I believe this finds articles with your keyword in the title only. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
RocketNews - Hmmm, on Friday there was a orange xml icon for search results. I hate to be picky, but it didn't work. On Sunday, it's gone. This week it's back, but I still can't get it to work. So here's hoping it will be in working order soon because RocketNews has excellent current news coverage. Until then, you can monitor RocketNews searches using their own web-based RSS aggregator. Just be aware that you can ONLY use the aggregator for RocketNews content.
Google News - Currently Google News offers email alerts, but no search results via RSS. So a couple of enterprising individuals set up web pages that would the trick for you. It seems that Google is getting cranky about this kind of thing, so don't get too attached to these web applications. XMLMania.com - Google News RSS/RDF Feed Generator - Oops, this one has been closed down by Google. So it's back to Voidstar which still seems to be in operation. For more information, see Google Moves to Block RSS Scraping, Internet.com, April 1, 2004.
Google Alert doesn't monitor news, per se, but rather, new additions to Google's search results. Register with Google Alert and you can opt to view all new items meeting your search criteria via RSS, or email if you prefer.
Westlaw Intraclips via RSS offer the most flexibility in terms of defining your feed. Select your database, create a Westlaw search, save it as an Intraclip, and there you go. You will have to pay for the full-text articles you retrieve ($2.75 per article, retail), and the updating takes place only 3 times a day, but you can't find a better selection of premium sources available via RSS.
Conclusion
I've set up several sample newsfeeds from several of the sources listed here. If you'd like to view them, just go to my Bloglines public subscriptions.
There's lots of news out there so keep your eyes open for the orange XML/RSS icon. RSS feeds are being added by the minute. I couldn't possibly list them all and definitely don't know them all! If you find a great source that I don't mention, please comment and share with the group.
Credits
I've collected this information from a variety of sources. Among them are:
- Steven Cohen's blog, Library Stuff, and book, Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs .
- Genie Tyburski's Virtual Chase & TVC Alert
- Jenny Levine's Computers in Libraries presentation, Unleashing the Power of RSS.
May 04, 2004
Westlaw Delivers RSS!
Westlaw Intraclips can now be delivered via RSS!
I've been wondering, okay, sometimes whining, occasionally outright complaining about the lack of RSS from either of the "big two" legal online vendors. So I was very excited to see the RSS option appear on the revamped Intraclips administrative interface.
RSS is not the only enhancement, but rather part of a fairly significant Intraclips overhaul. Another item on my wish list, wire services, is also now available for the first time via Intraclips for those who want REALLY current news.
Intraclips are free to set up and can be used to track new content from a variety of sources including newspapers, business magazines, and recent state and federal cases. You select the database and create the search, then you can choose to display the current search results on your Intranet (html or xml), and/or receive a list of results via email. A charge of $2.75 per document is incurred when you click through to the full-text of an item listed on the clip. Intraclips are very similar to Westclips, but offer the additional Intranet, and now RSS options.
To create an Intraclip visit West's Integration Solutions. You will, of course, need a Westlaw user id. I use the Internet interface. After creating your search, select RSS under "Format". Once you've completed the setup, you'll see the little orange RSS box next to the name of the clip in your clip directory.
If you'd like to see a sample RSS Intraclip, take a look at my public feeds on Bloglines. Just click on West Intraclip - KM. This Intraclip is set up to require a user id and client-matter number for full-text articles. There are other options including transparent authentication, in other words, a password is not required for users within your network. Check with your Westlaw rep for more info.
Is there a huge demand for RSS? Probably not right now, but the demand is growing quickly. It makes sense to anticipate the need sooner rather than later. Email is becoming problematic as a delivery mechanism, and RSS is an exciting alternative.
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)April 14, 2004
RSS Tutorial Part III: Using Bloglines
While it's true that there are other web-based RSS aggregators out there such as MyFeedster, DailyWhirl, Newsgator, even MyYahoo, none hold a candle to Bloglines. I've recently switched from my desktop aggregator, Newzcrawler, to Bloglines and haven't looked back. Now I can access my feeds from any computer. Bloglines also offers some unique features that I think you'll like. More on that later. Let's start with the basics.
Click on Register to sign up. The only information required is an email address. Since Bloglines is free, no credit card is needed. It may not be free forever, so enjoy it while you can, carpe diem and all that stuff.
Adding Feeds
An aggregator doesn't do you much good unless you've got some news you want to aggregate. So after logging in you might want to browse the Blogline list of their most popular blogs. Note that many feeds on the list are not actually from blogs, but are RSS feeds from some fairly mainstream news services such as the N.Y. Times. Click on the subscribe link next to any that interest you and a subscription will be added to your blogs list; no muss, no fuss.
You can also review my public subscriptions. If you see something you like, click on the link for the feed, then click on the subscribe button to add it to your own MyBlogs page. If you'd like to share your list, note that you can designate some subscriptions as public, and some private so you don't have to share everything. If you'd like to share your public feeds with LawLibTech readers, leave a comment below with the URL.
From your MyBlogs page you can also add subscriptions by simply entering the feed's URL in the box at the bottom of the left frame labeled "Subscribe by entering URL". How do you know if your favorite web page or blog offer an RSS feed? Look for the little orange XML box, 
, a link saying "Syndicate this Site" or a RSS icon. If you click on any of these three, you should see the xml file. Cut and paste the URL for that file into the Bloglines subscribe box, and you should be set!
By now you should have a few feeds on your MyBlogs page. What? You want MORE? Okay then, click on the My Recommendations link from the left frame of the MyBlogs page and Bloglines will provide a list of additional feeds that you might enjoy. How do they know? Bloglines recommendations are based on the feeds that you've already selected. You may want to revisit the Bloglines recommendations as you refine your MyBlogs page.
Basic Navigation
Your feeds are displayed in the left-frame in a directory-like listing. Folders containing unread news are bolded. Click on a feed, and the headlines and summaries will appear in the right-hand frame. Click on a folder name and new entries from all the feeds in that folder will be grouped together in one long list. The default view shows unread news only; if you'd like to see more, specify how far back you'd like to go in the box labeled "Display items within the last ______" at the bottom of the list of entries.
My only complaint with the Bloglines display is that you have to page through all headlines complete with summaries. There is no option to view only the headlines so you can pick and choose. Still, paging down is simple enough and I can adapt.
Organizing Your News
Your feeds can be easily organized in folders by clicking on the "Manage subscriptions" link at the bottom of the left-hand frame. Follow the instructions for creating folders and moving feeds.
I have experienced some problems in the "manage subscription" area. Ticking off the items you want to move, then clicking on the folder you want to move them TO, usually works just fine. Other times not. I have three items I have never been able to move into a folder no matter how many times I select and click. What can I say; every tool has its dark side.
Those are the basics. Now let's move on to some of the fun frills.
Drag the link on this page to your browser's link bar, then when you're visiting a site with a feed that you'd like to add to your subscriptions list, click on "subscribe to this feed" from your link bar, and it will be automatically added.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Once I started using an aggregator on a regular basis I wanted just about EVERYTHING delivered that way. So I was very excited to learn about Bloglines's email subscription feature. I now subscribe to law-lib via Bloglines. Between filtering spam and subscribing to lists via Bloglines, my email inbox is absolutely sparse! And this is a great way to avoid the spam that seems inevitable with Internet distribution lists. If you start to get spam to the Bloglines address, delete it and re-subscribe under a new one.
To be alerted when there are new items in your feeds, download the Bloglines Notifier. After installation, a Bloglines icon sits in your system tray. A message indicating how many unread feeds are waiting for you pops up when new items arrive. A web version that requires no installation is also available.
Nice feature, but the first thing you may notice if you have several feeds is that the darn thing is going off all the time. If this is too much of a good thing, try turning the notifier off for certain feeds. To do this, go to "Manage Subscriptions", check off the feeds for which you do NOT want notification, then select "Ignored by Notifier." You can also right click on the notifier icon, select "Settings" and increase the number of seconds listed under "Check messages every ______ seconds." These strategies should help get things under control.
Keyword Search
You can search your own subscriptions, or ALL blogs, by keyword. This is VERY handy for finding a blog entry you've already read, looking for items in your blogs on a particular topic, or looking at ALL available blogs by topic.
Whew!
This is by far my longest blog entry to date. I will remind myself in the future that blog entries should be short and concise. In the meantime, have fun with Bloglines. Do you love it? Or hate it? Have you found a better alternative? Share your comments or questions!
For more information see:
RSS Tutorial Part I: What IS RSS
RSS Tutorial Part II: Getting Started with RSS Aggregators
RSS Tutorial Part IIIA: Bloglines Revisited - New Display Feature!!
RSS Tutorial Part IIIB: Bloglines for Email Discussion Lists
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:44 PM | Comments (5)April 07, 2004
Can RSS Relieve Information Overload?
Is RSS a useful means of delivering current information to attorneys and/or staff? Jennifer Klyse, an enterprise application analyst at a Washington DC law firm thinks so. She is in the process of implementing the Newsgator news aggregator for selected users at Patton Boggs. She also updates her project team via an RSS feed. That just two examples of the use of RSS in an enterprise environment included in the Econtent article, Can RSS Relieve Information Overload?
If you're responsible for Intranet content, you'll want to read the section on "fighting empty portal syndrome" which explains how RSS can be used to keep your "portals stocked with fresh, relevant news."
The discussion of the advantages of receiving information via RSS rather than email raises an interesting point. "RSS has the added benefit of providing a clean, clear way to subscribe and unsubscribe, something that is not always true with email newsletters" according to Dryden Marketing Group's Phil Gomes. "The RSS model puts the subscriber in complete control of the subscription process." That kind of control is something just about any email user can appreciate.
However, I don't agree with Lockergnome's Pirillo's statement that "Email is dead." Email, spam and all, is still an important mode of communication. But RSS can offer a way to enjoy public discussions on topics of interest in an efficient way and without the dangers of being inundated with information you don't want and didn't ask for. As such, I believe it's more of a substitute for listservs, discussion groups and email newsletters, than a complete replacement of email.
But I have to agree with Ron Miller's conclusion: "One thing is certain, RSS provides an easy path to content syndication, and this simplicity will drive people to use it."
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:28 PM | Comments (1)April 05, 2004
Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies
I remember the exact moment that I became interested in the potential of RSS for research. I'd been familiar with RSS for several years and played around with feeds a bit, but RSS just wasn't thrilling me. Then I read Steven Cohen's article in Information Outlook, "The RSS revolution: Using RSS: An Explanation and Guide." When he said that he monitored news on a particular company via RSS I was hooked. My only complaint? He didn't detail how to do so in that particular article. But that's okay....he wrote a book!
Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs is a relatively short book with a long title; and it's chock-full of useful information on how to find current information on the web.
The book includes suggestions on current awareness sources for librarians including how to keep up on search engine developments, as well as information on reading and/or creating a blog. As he points out, creating a blog is one of the best ways to stay current on the web: "Although reading weblogs alone may allow one to keep current, librarians who write weblogs may tend to get more out of the material in that they are spending more time collecting the content, analyzing the materials and putting down their thoughts about it." He's right on the money; I consider that one of the biggest benefits to blogging.
Particularly useful are the chapters on web site monitoring and RSS feeds. The details on using Moreover content to monitor news on a company are included, as well as information on Hubmed for keeping current on medical research.
Things are changing fast in this area, which makes print publications almost immediately obsolete. So act fast...though sources for current information are increasing rapidly, the information in this book is still current and valuable. You can also supplement it with Steven Cohen's blog, LibraryStuff.
Steven definitely deserves the title, "Mover and Shaker".
Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs
by Steven M. CohenRSS Tutorial Part II: Getting Started with RSS Aggregators
Last week I discussed "What is RSS?". Now that you know what RSS is and what it can do, let's talk RSS aggregators, those wonderful things that make sense of RSS files.
They're called aggregators because they pull all of your selected RSS files into one place making it easy to browse newly posted information from blogs, web sites, and stored searches.
In my opinion, the best aggregators have a very "email" feel to them, reminiscent of Outlook. The worst aggregators lack the familiarity that can make it easy to quickly get up to speed with a new application.
There are MANY RSS aggregators out there. Amphetadesk was an early one, and is free. After I tried it, I avoided RSS feeds for about 6 months. Luckily there are much better options available.
Newsgator integrates with Outlook so you can pickup your email and review your RSS feeds all in one place. Newsgator has received some very good reviews and is quite popular.
My RSS reader of choice is Newzcrawler. While it is not integrated with Outlook, it is a very "Outlook-like" application so the learning curve is fairly low. Here's a screen shot to give you an idea how it pulls together your all your news in one place:
You can specify the update frequency of each feed, and if you have Newzcrawler open, a headline balloon pops-up to notify you of updated entires. I particularly like the "make newspaper" feature, which compiles all the unread headlines and excerpts into a concise, easy to read HTML page which can easily be pasted into an email message and sent on to other interested parties:
For additional information on RSS aggregators, see:
- RSS News Readers Browse for You, PC Magazine, Oct. 2003
- Refining Paperless News, WashingtonPost.com, March 14, 2004
Web Based Aggregators
One of the biggest advantages to web-based aggregators is that you can easily access them from any PC. If you read an entry at work, it will show up marked read at home. No synchronization is necessary. In the past this advantage didn't necessarily make up for the lack of features in the web-based versions, but, as happens on the Internet, such services are quickly evolving.
There are several web-based aggregators out there, but none are as good as Bloglines. And, for now at least, it's free. What a quick and easy way to get started with RSS feeds!
Bloglines provides a left-frame with a directory-like listing of all of your RSS feeds. Your news can be easily organized in folders. Folders containing unread news are bolded. Just click and read.
By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if the next version of Outlook will have it's very own RSS reader. That alone would ensure that RSS would quickly reach critical mass, so be prepared!
Coming attractions - RSS Tutorial Part III: Using Bloglines
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 12:04 PM | Comments (2)March 21, 2004
RSS Tutorial: What IS RSS
http://lawlibtech.com/archives/000324.htmlI've posted several entries about RSS resources and tools. This week I thought I'd define RSS for those of you who aren't familiar with it. I have a LOT of information on RSS to share with you, so I'll start with the basics, then continue posting on RSS tools and content.
I could tell you that RSS is an xml format for syndication of current web content. I could also tell you that it stands for Rich Site Summary OR RDF Site Summary OR Really Simple Syndication. But none of that really means much to most people. So let's discuss what RSS will do for you.
RSS allows you to receive notification of current content without having to visit the web site of interest to determine if it has been updated. This is powerful stuff, since it means that with the right tools you can monitor a large number of sites in a relatively short period of time.
RSS became popular with the growth of blogs as a way for people to keep up with their favs. But it is being used increasingly by a variety of websites including those with commercial news content. For the researcher that's what makes it so useful. More and more valuable content is becoming available via RSS everyday. Anyone who needs to monitor current news on a regular basis will need to understand and use RSS in some form going forward.
If a web site and/or blog chooses to make its content available via RSS, they create a file that is automatically updated whenever the web site's content is updated. The file contains basic information about the updated content, including the title, date and usually a brief extract.
The file itself is pretty ugly, though not really all that complex. That's because it's not meant to be read by a person. Instead, the file is typically read by an RSS aggregator of some kind, which nicely formats the information and makes it easy to read by the end user.
If you're the curious type, and would like to see what a basic RSS file looks like, take a look at the one available for TVC Alert on the Virtual Chase. Note that all the text is enclosed in tags. The ones at the top of the file include information about the "channel" or source of the information provided. The rest of the file is broken up into single items with tags to indicate whether the text is a title, link, description, etc. It's hard to read because it's really not MEANT to be read in this format, but trust me, it's much easier to understand than say, a MARC record.
For those of you who are sitting on the edge of your seats, and can't wait for the next installment before getting started with RSS, take a look at the bibliography I compiled for the SCALL Institute. There are a number of excellent articles listed that will allow you to jump to the head of the class. Also, Jenny Levine's recent presentation at Computers in Libraries is available on the web and includes a wealth of information on "Unleashing the Power of RSS."
For more information on getting started with RSS see:
Getting Started with RSS Aggregators
Using Bloglines
March 07, 2004
Amazon RSS Feeds
There are only a few authors that I watch carefully, purchasing every new book they write. Now I can monitor new releases by subscribing to Amazon RSS feeds for authors, keywords or categories. Genie Tyburski provides some welcome detail on how to set up keyword and author RSS feeds.
As Jenny Levine points out, about now the catalogers among us should be getting ideas. More importantly, let's hope it gives the companies who create cataloging software something to think about.
If you're not familiar with the advantages of RSS feeds, you may want to read a few of the articles listed in my bibliography. I highly recommend "The RSS revolution: Using RSS: An Explanation and Guide" (Information Outlook, Dec, 2002, by Steven M. Cohen).
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 07:46 PM | Comments (0)February 29, 2004
Delivering Current Information to Your Organization - Presentation
There are a variety of ways to find and deliver news information to your organization, including tools offered by proprietary services as well as free options on the web. My presentation at the recent SCALL Institute discusses the methods of delivery, vendor tools, web services and a brief introduction to RSS feeds. (Be aware that the presentation is 3 meg in size, and could take some time to download.)
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)February 22, 2004
Yahoo & RSS
It has been a big week at Yahoo! They've abandoned Google as their search engine and introduced their own; AND you can now add RSS feeds to MyYahoo. There's even an interesting convergence between those two features.
As noted by the Shifted Librarian, the Yahoo search engine includes in their search results links to RSS feeds so you can add them to MyYahoo in one click. For example, search for the Virtual Chase on Yahoo, and you'll see a link next to the site summary that says "RSS: View as XML - Add to My Yahoo! [Beta]"
While I was wandering around in MyYahoo, I also noticed that you can add cartoons to your personalized page. I quickly added my favorites, Doonesbury, For Better or For Worse, and Cathy. (In case you haven't heard, Cathy is officially engaged.)
RSS AND comics! All in one place! What more could a person want?
Delivering Current Information to Your Organization - Books & Articles
I will be presenting at the SCALL (Southern California Association of Law Libraries) Institute, Feb. 28th, on the various ways to deliver news and current information. Below is the bibliography for the session which includes selected materials on blogging, RSS, intranets and content licensing. I've included links when the materials are available on the web. Thanks to Marlene Bubrick for making this bibliography presentable.
INTRODUCTION
BOOKS
Cohen, Steven M. Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs. Chicago: American Library Association, 2003.
BLOGS
BOOKS
Blood, Rebecca. The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2002.
Stauffer, Todd. Blog On: Building Online Communities with Web Logs.
Berkeley, Calif.; London: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2002.
Stone, Biz. Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content. Boston: New Riders, 2003.
ARTICLES
Huwe, Terence K. Born to Blog. Computers in Libraries, November 2003, at 44.
COPYRIGHT, LICENSING AND PRICING
Alford, Duncan E. Negotiating and Analyzing Electronic License Agreements,
94 Law Library Journal 621(Fall 2002).
White, Martin. Content at What Cost? EContent, August 2002, at 46.
RSS
BOOKS
Moffatt, M. RSS - A Primer for Publishers & Content Providers.
ARTICLES
Special: RSS? What is it? B/ITE - Bulletin of the Information Technology Division of SLA.
Broun, Kevin. Integrating Internet Content, Library Journal, October 15, 2003.
Cohen, Steven M. "The Rss Revolution: Using RSS: An
Explanation and Guide." Information Outlook, December 2002, at 6.
Kennedy, Dennis M. Beating Information Overload with News Aggregators, Law Practice Management (November/December 2003)
Mattison, David. So You Want to Start a Syndicated Revolution: RSS News Blogging for Searchers, Searcher, February 2003, at 38.
Tschabitscher, Heinz. Reading News and Blogs via Really Simple Syndication - Spam Free
INTRANETS
Fichter, Darlene. Blogging Software for Intranet Applications, Online,
January 2003, at 61.
WIRELESS DELIVERY
Steiner, Ina. Serving Up the Wireless Web, Online, September 2001, at 26.
Varnum, Ken. Information @ Your Fingertips, Online, September 2000, at 15.
MISCELLANEOUS
Smith, Steve. Push Back: An Old Technology Teaches Content New Tricks,
EContent, July 2003, at 33.
