In case it’s not obvious by now, I’m very passionate about ‘enabling’ technology – technology that enables people to go beyond themselves and accomplish great things. My favorites sites are sites like Lifehacker, Mashable, Stepcase Lifehack, etc. – you get the point! I read the geeky stuff looking for good, fast and cheap tools so that my clients don’t have to – I keep my fingers on the pulse of what’s happening technology and productivity-wise for you…

Because I’m out there on the cutting edge, I see a lot of great stuff come and go and each year it seems there’s ONE BIG THING I discover that changes the way I work forever. Last year for example, it was ‘mastering’ WordPress – that one thing had a fundamental impact on my business and my life, in fact, most of my business now revolves around WordPress in one way or another. Well, if someone asked me what is the coolest tool or technology I’ve mastered in the past five or ten years, my answer, without a doubt would be rss feeds and readers. RSS? Yes, RSS!

The Wikipedia defines RSS this way:

“RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” but sometimes “Rich Site Summary”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed’s URI or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.” Source: RSS – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If that definition left you scratching your head, here’s a video from my friends at CommonCraft that will net it out for you…

Here’s a simple illustration I use in my seminars: when you want to know what’s happening in your town, do you drive to the local ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX affliates and ask the receptionist what’s happening today? NO! You turn on a device that brings the signal from their station to you, thus saving you oodles of time. The same people who think my illustration is absurd are still surfing the web, going to their favorite sites to see if anything has changed lately, wasting time while missing the important stuff. Smart people on the other hand use a feed reader to create a virtual ‘newspaper’ from their own custom list of sources and have news about the things that interest them delivered to their desktop or phone.

My pro-Google bias is long established at this point so it will come as no surprise that my tool of choice is Google Reader. Here’s a short video that introduces the concept:

By now it should be clear that Google Reader is a powerful way to listen to the internet, but finding content for Google Reader can be a problem. Here are 5 different ways you can add content:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvf8E6knJtY

As recently as last week, Mashable reported that RSS adoption is only at about 11%

“I just caught the writeup Steve Rubel did on a recent Forrester report on consumer adoption of RSS. Steve (based off the Forrester report) is of the distinct opinion that we’ve entered into the era of peak adoption. According to the survey, mainstream consumer adoption of RSS is at 11%, only up 2% over the last three years.” Source: RSS Usage is Much Higher than 11 Percent

What does that mean to you? It means that mastering RSS to ‘listen’ to the internet gives you a huge competitive advantage over your peers who are still viewing internet content the old and slow way. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…