I [heart] RSS

All right; I'm just diving in to this whole RSS thing... If you listen to podcasts on iTunes, you probably are loving RSS as well (whether you knew it or not). If you are in iTunes, and you click "subcribe" to a podcast, or if you purchase a season pass for all the episodes of 'Lost,' then Apple puts a little RSS feed in your iTunes music library that automatically downloads new episodes or podcasts as they are created. Pretty cool stuff. I'm getting into it more and more with Bloglines (as I mentioned in a previous post), by subscribing to a bunch of different blogs and news sources, so when any of those sources or blogs publish new information, my Bloglines account reads the RSS feed, and downloads the updated information. Here's another step with RSS... it's Google Alerts. If you haven't used this yet, try it out. You can perform a Google search, and have Google send you an email alert monthly, weekly, or even daily, as new information on that search parameter is produced. At first, I thought this would be cool for me to do a search for "educational technology" and so everyday, Google sends me an email with a list of all the news stories, websites, or blogs mentioning those terms. I got to thinking about other applications for this, and had some interesting conversations with friends who also use it. One buddy has a Google alert set for his name, so whenever anything is published with his name, he gets an alert. I did this, and got an alert from someone posting on a 'family reunion' website looking for long-lost relatives. Pretty interesting.

Then I got to thinking, 'this would have come in handy when I was searching to buy a bass guitar.' You could throw up an RSS Google alert search for "Fender Jazz Bass for Sale" and keep an eye out for any real good deals that come around. Another buddy checks Craig's List religiously, and found an $800 Wurlitzer for $50. If you don't have the time or the diligence to constantly scour Craig's List or Ebay, RSS feeds and alerts can help keep you on top of the news. I'd be curious of any other ways you are using Google Alerts.