RSS

I've heard of RSS before, but I never really understood how it worked. I certainly never thought I needed it before. Even now, I'm not sure that it's really a necessity. As a luxury, it is pretty cool.
The important thing is to decide what you care about enough to want instant updates on every day. Personally, I don't find RSS very useful for work, because I can only hold so much relevant information in my head at one time. If I want to find something out, I would rather look it up as needed instead of sifting through a ton of information each day to see if anything corresponds to my interests.

I can see great possibilities for RSS in my personal life, though. I set up a feed from Wowbrary to see the newest science fiction/fantasy books added to the library. I also subscribed to my favorite author's blog. And just for laughs, I added a feed for the comic strip Pearls Before Swine. This way, if I need a break after work, I can catch up on all the things I like at once.

The beauty of RSS is aggregation. It's one-stop shopping for information. Instead of visiting three different sites to see if there is a new post on a blog, a new comic strip, or a newly released book I wish to put on hold, I can do everything from one location. Also, it saves time by alerting me only when new information is available.

My feelings about RSS are mixed; it can be a source of great information or a huge time drain. You simply have to be careful to subscribe to very specific feeds, or you will be buried in an avalanche of unnecessary (but interesting!) data.