Things 8 and 9: RSS feeds and Exploring Merlin

Okay, I have to say that I'm not terribly excited about RSS feeds and using Bloglines, etc. Perhaps it will grow on me, and I do see the advantages of compiling all the new information in one place where I can view at my leisure rather than going to each blog or news site individually. I didn't find the sites like Bloglines, Feedster, etc to be very intuitive. They weren't immediately easy to navigate or figure out which I see as a disadvantage. That said, this technology is fairly new so I expect the sites will improve and become more user-friendly in the future. I didn't like that some of the feeds I subscribed to through Bloglines were really old with no recent content... if a feed hadn't been updated since late 2006 what are the chances it's going to put out new content any time soon? Of course I know Bloglines has no control over the content of the feeds but maybe they could have some sort of "last updated" information. However, gripe as I might, it is very easy to unsubscribe to these dud feeds. Other times when I click on a feed or news story I want to read I get an annoying pop-up ad or something completely unrelated to what I thought I was clicking on. This drives me crazy.

I can see how this is great for keeping up with a bunch of different blogs in one place. Although I've known about blogs for years now, I admit that I do not read any one blog on a regular basis. Perhaps this exercise will change that.

I subscribed to MERLIN-- not a whole lot of action on their feed either. For the most part I like their set-up with library related blogs on the right hand side, although some of them just seem to be personal blogs by librarians with little or no real library-related content. Most, however, are good blogs with good info. The best part of the site I've found so far is the "learning links" section which will introduce the uninitiated to much of the techie stuff available to libraries and librarians. If you are intimidated by the mention of Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, Avatars, and Social Networking, this is the place to go to find out what they are and what they can do for you.