Week 4, Things 8 & 9

It's been a while since I posted. Real life got in the way of this "online life". When I did get back to my web explorations I spent an ENORMOUS amount of time exploring RSS feeds. I have very mixed feelings about this right now.

On one hand, I like the idea of having a all of this information available in one spot and receiving an alert when there is something new from one of the sites that I have selected. On the other hand, this just increases, exponentially, the amount of information that I want to read and/or feel that I should read for professional or other reasons. Every blog has links to others that sound interesting and before I know it, I have been sucked in, sidetracked, and huge chunks of time have been lost from the tasks that I really want or need to do.

Another issue for me right now is that there are so many different RSS formats. Just when I think I've got a handle on this stuff, I find a site (like School Library Journal) with great information that I might really be able to use in my job but the feed is not available in either Bloglines or Google. If it is, I couldn't figure it out anyway..... So, I still have to remember to visit sites like that separately or open yet another account with yet another password in an attempt to consolidate all of my feeds onto one site. I begin to wonder if it wouldn't be faster to visit each site individually after all.

It's like dealing with the phone company(ies) or ordering coffee at Starbucks...too dang many choices.