Really Simple Stuff (If You Know What You’re Doing)

I found this lesson less than edifying. Sure there’s websites that are all about feeds so that you don’t have to search for feeds, but how do you navigate them? Where are the Help options? Where’s the gentle tutorial for using RSS directories and databases in this lesson? Ironically, setting up a Reader account was easier and had loads of instructions, but using these RSS search tools is more frustrating and we get no help or tutorials!

I checked out all the search tools in the discovery exercise and was most unimpressed with them. Feedster—the largest collection of RSS feeds—is down for construction. TopixNet had tons of topic and forums, but no easy way to get the facts and details instead of everyone’s opinion on a particular topic. Syndic8 can pull up lots of results, but all you learn is the different state for the feeds, from Desiring Syndication to Dead. I can’t say Technorati was particularly exciting and the tutorial wasn’t particularly informative or inspiring.

I found Bloglines and Google Reader’s feed finders more to my liking. They found me websites with information instead of blogs about my search topic and they didn’t leave me feeling overwhelmed with the technicality of RSS feeds like the search tools in the exercise.

While doing this exercise, I kept asking myself this: Why do I want blogs about news instead of the news itself? I think I’ll stick to finding RSS feeds myself instead of using these feeder directories, thank you very much.