Thursday, April 7, 2011

Thing 9: Google Reader/RSS

So this is something else that Gmail can do that I had no idea.  It's amazing the gizmos available to us via this one email account which we never notice - at least, I never notice.  My biggest issue is knowing what is through my Coe account and what is through my other gmail account - eventually I'll have to get this sorted out.

Google Reader makes sense - I mean, listening to the explanation by Common Craft, it should be so easy and make my life so much more efficient.  Truth be told, though, I open it up and it confuses me.  I look at all the stories - most of which I won't ever have time to read - and I am daunted.  And I don't like how they look, isolated in that plain, rather ugly Google Reader background.  I like the personalization of blogs and Reader take away from that.  I guess I had thought it would be more like a homepage website with links to the blogs, etc, I did not realize it would look like email.

I can see its use professionally - perhaps for job opportunities, or to keep up with important trends, current events, stocks, etc. that have to do with your occupation.  For me, if I were in journalism, then current events and RSS feeds from, say, the New York Times would probably be important, as would something like MediaSource.  So, from that standpoint, I can see it being important to become comfortable with it in order to use it as an organizational tool.

Overall, I think if I get used to it I may be able to appreciate it, but until then, I think I will find it too daunting to really spend much time on.

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