RSS feeds

Today I viewed the video RSS in Plain English. Common Craft explained RSS feeds in a simplistic way. I also read/viewed the other suggested resources. I understand that RSS is an acronym for “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary”. Using RSS requires both an RSS reader and an RSS feed. Readers can be desktop or web-based. Web-based readers are free and accessible from any computer connected to the internet. One article I read explained RSS in the following way ‘these feeds will push content to us rather than make the user pull the content to them. RSS feeds are small files containing information about the Website content. When you use your reader it looks for changes in these files. If the content has changed the reader will display the new content.
I created a Google Reader account as suggested and added David Rothman’s Blog, MedlinePlus Health News and Clinical Alerts and Advisories. There were only three alerts listed. In MedlinePlus Health News there was an endless list but the new items were in bold print as were those new items in Rothman’s blog.. Now that I know what to do I will add other URLs of interest in the future.
I like this web technology as it automates the information gathering process effortlessly making it a big time saver. In my personal life I could use RSS for gardening sites, an interest of mine. I haven’t had time to investigate this yet. In my workplace I note that many databases offer RSS feeds for journal tables of content. In some instances you have to create a personal account. I see also that you can create RSS feeds when searching in PubMed. Another advantage would be that feeds could be shared and forwarded to colleagues.