Author: Justin

firehose sipping – managing your rss feeds

Like we said a few weeks ago, RSS is a great tool for keeping up with frequently updated information sources. If you followed our NetworkEducation you even set up a Google Reader account. The problem with RSS is the absolute flood of information you can open yourself up to.

If you follow 50 blogs that post weekly, that’s 50 posts each week, so fewer than 10 a day. That’s not too hard to keep on top of. You can easily manage to read all of those posts, even if you don’t check your reader every day. But if you’ve got a site like CBC.ca in there updating you with dozens of the day’s headlines that can add up to piles and piles of posts, taunting you with their unread status.

There are a couple of good habits to develop as you become a heavier RSS user that’ll save your sanity.

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Sharing Online

The Power of a Tweet – Microblogging

When people first hear about microblogging, there are two common reactions: “Why would anyone want to know what I’m doing right now?” and “It’s fun on Facebook, but how could it possibly be part of my personal success story?”

Like many other new web tools, however, the more you microblog, the more uses you can find for it. It’s the little tool that could and part of the next wave of online products that could really change the way we do things.

What exactly is microblogging?

Here’s how microblogging works:

  • Write a text messages (less than 140 characters)
  • Post it online through a microblogging tool like Twitter or identi.ca.
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Sharing Online

Linkblogging = Pointing at Awesome

So you’ve found something awesome on the internet. Maybe it’s a comic or a LOLcat or an article that completely supports your side of a recent argument about the economic foundations of Prussia. Great. How are you going to tell people about it?

You’ve got a lot of options in the current digital environment. You could email your friends, you can put it on your Facebook (under sharing Links, it’s on the lefthand side of the page), or you can make a linkblog and share it with the world.

Linkblogs are a bit different than regular blogs. While a blog can be a platform for you to write and express yourself, a linkblog is more like a pointer to cool stuff you didn’t make. The benefits of this kind of thing should be easy to see: it isn’t as hard to point people at something cool as it is to create something cool yourself. Remember our post about RSS readers, and how we called them news aggregators? Well, a linkblog is kind of like an attention aggregator. You’re pointing out things you think someone else should pay attention to. The more people who do it, the more will be infected with whichever your favourite meme is.

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RSS makes staying up-to-date easy

It’s a crazy, busy world out there. Who has the time to read newspapers, catch up with TV news or regularly visit their favourite news sites, blogs and listings pages? RSS is an ultra-simple way for you to get the kind of news you want delivered to you instead of forcing you to go out searching.

What exactly is RSS?

The idea behind RSS is that you subscribe to customizable streams or feeds of news and information which are sent to your reader or possibly your inbox. Instead of you going out to a pile of websites to find the news, “Really Simple Syndication” means the sources you trust can send you information whenever there’s something new to report. And it’s not limited to news – you can get RSS feeds for events listings, blogs, quotes of the day, job listings, sports scores… whatever tickles your information fancy. If you see this orange RSS symbol on a website, you can subscribe to its RSS feed. Sometimes It’ll just say RSS and sometimes it’ll just say subscribe, but whatever it says it means the same thing; the site will send the new articles to your reader every time new content is published.

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Sharing Online

What’s Your Digital Tattoo?

Everyone’s life changes, which is why it’s probably not a great idea to get a tattoo of your boy/girlfriend’s name on your arm (or face on your chest) in the first week of dating. Kind of awkward after the breakup, and might provoke some tricky questions when you find someone new. It’s common sense.

So why don’t we think about those pictures of us and our friends blotto on Granville Street last night the same way? They might not be the best images to represent us tomorrow, and could provoke some tricky questions from prospective employers, grad-school admissions boards or, of course, our families. (You know your mom’s on Facebook, right?)

What exactly is a digital tattoo?

We often think of the internet as ephemeral, like everything we say’ll disappear tomorrow under the flood of new stuff showing up in your Facebook feed. The problem is that’s not entirely true. The stuff you say, post, or share online, including images, videos, and personal data is (or can be) public and forever. So while it might seems harmless to post videos of you being hilariously drunk now, it’s kind of like getting a tattoo when you’re hilariously drunk. Neither ink on flesh nor videos on YouTube will magically disappear forever just before your potential employers start Googling you (which they will). You have to be mindful when you do things (or at least do your best to clean up after yourself later) because the Internet is public and forever, like a tattoo on your face.

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Announcements

Hello there

Welcome to the NetworkEd UBC blog. It used to be This Is Your Life 2.0, but changes have happened and we’ll be setting up shop over here now. As soon as we import that information over. Watch this space starting January 17 for new/revamped posts about managing your student life in the age of social networks. Thanks!

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