GlobalChicago gets RSS!
…and this is just amazing. Credit for this shift goes to ChrisCorrigan, who recently RSSed his ParkingLot blog, and GeorgeNemeth, who recently asked if I didn’t have an RSS feed available. It could be a coincidence that these nudges came so close together… or it could be a blogosphere conspiracy. I rather like the latter explanation, even though my RSSing here hardly warrants even the minimal effort such a very small conspiracy would require. But no matter now, the damage is done!
For those unfamiliar with RSS, it seems to stand for “Really Simple Syndication.” On this end, it means that I’ve put an XML button and a bit of code at the bottom of the left sidebar. On your end, it means that if you go get an RSS reader, you can click that button (or click here) and other RSS/XML links on weblogs and major news websites worldwide and the “reader” will collect all the latest news for you in one place. Like email, RSS readers are either (small) applications you download for free and run on your machine, or free services that run totally on webpages (like web-based email).
For someone tracking many blogs and a fair amount of world news, this feels downright magical. Brain is still sorting this out, but starting to relax and stretch and ease into what feels like a good bit more space. It’s the low-gravity, higher-powered, “whoa” sort of sense one sometimes gets with a new computer… “NOW, what can I do that I never thought about doing before? …why, I think I’ll go leap a tall building in my new spare time!”
Thanks to GeorgeNemeth who turned me onto the BlogLines RSS reader and also the ChristianScienceMonitor RSS page. Along the way, I found feedrolling service, so now there’s a bunch of news collecting here in the right sidebar, as well. Ta da!
UPDATED: XML feed is now the Atom feed from Blogger.com. feed