Well - real TV addicts have DVR or Tivo or some such way to get new episodes, but if you can’t afford those and want to keep up with your new TV shows, mytvrss looks pretty neat!!

Select your favorite shows below, and then click “Create feed” to generate your own personalized RSS feed. We’ll then alert you through the RSS feed the day an episode is aired. You don’t have to register!

My mother has 2 (maybe 3) VCRs in her house to record her shows - after I teach her about RSS, this might be pretty handy for her.

Found via DownloadSquad.

After upgrading to the new release of WordPress I went from 2000 readers to 900 - that means that my plugin that counts those of you not using my FeedBurner feed doesn’t work with the new release (or over 1000 of you got annoyed at me for something I wrote ). So - if you’re reading this via RSS I’d love if you’d take a moment to change your feed subscription to my FeedBurner feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/web2learning/YOVk).

I wrote a short while ago about finally understanding how to use Yahoo! Pipes and since then I’ve been playing. I have come up with a pretty complicated looking Pipe that does something so simple - something we’ve wanted for a while.

Just click the image to the left to see the full screenshot - but basically I’m using this to pull the RSS feed out of our Wikindx page which we use to keep our Abraham Kuyper Bibliography and editing the results so we only see new items and we don’t see who did the adding - since our users don’t care who it was to added the item - they just want to know that there is a new item.

Anyway, if you were confused about what Pipes could do - then I recommend reading Mashing Up Multiple Web Feeds Using Yahoo! Pipes, an article By Jody Condit Fagan in the recent issue of Computers in Libraries and then start poking around. Another great way to learn about pipes is to clone other people’s pipes and learn from what they’re doing.

Technorati Tags: yahoo pipes, rss

Okay - I have to admit, I had no clue what the heck Yahoo! Pipes were all about. I read about them in the beginning and was lost, but thanks to Mashing Up Multiple Web Feeds Using Yahoo! Pipes, an article By Jody Condit Fagan in the recent issue of Computers in Libraries, I get it!

I started playing this morning. I created a mashup of all of the feeds we have at the library

It was so easy once I figured out where things were - which might have been even easier if I had just read the instructions

Technorati Tags: yahoo pipes, rss, mashups

I can’t personally find a use for this - but it’s so neat I still want to share it with you (who knows you might be looking for just this thing). Peterson’s now has a College & University Feed Directory broken down by some broad categories including Libraries-General and Libraries-New Acquisitions.

[via RSS4Lib]

Technorati Tags: rss

I didn’t get a chance to do a thorough testing of Bloglines Beta yet, but there is a detailed post over at Read/Write Web that you might be interested in.

I’ll continue to test it out, but for now: Bloglines has me back as a fan!

Technorati Tags: bloglines beta, bloglines

Most you know that I’m one of those people who stuck with Bloglines when everyone migrated over to Google Reader. Well, the pay off is here! Bloglines has announced a new Bloglines Beta and it’s slick! I’ve only been playing for a few minutes (I have to get to work!) but I wanted to share this new release with everyone.

Features I’ve found so far:

• Clicking a folder doesn’t mark everything read - you have to scroll through or click “Mark all read”
• New Bloglines homepage allows you to put your favorite feeds on the opening page
• Different view options let you choose traditional 2 pane view or the new 3 pane view (like email)

Check it out if you’re still a Bloglines user - and if you’re not - maybe you should give it a looksie anyway.

Technorati Tags: bloglines

Via RSS Compendium Blog:

Penguin, the UK book publisher, has published a page containing its RSS feeds

This is very neat - mostly because when I lived in England they had a promotion going on. 1 pound classics. Penguin classics all cost £1 (approx $1.55 when I was there). I came home with so many Penguin classics that year!!! Anyway, this is handy and something that I’d like to see from more publishers - even better - something I’d like to see libraries aggregating and making use of … not sure how … but there’s got to be a way we can use this to enhance our sites

Boy - today I just keep finding confirmation of every buy out I’ve talked about in the last month. First it was Ebay and StumbleUpon now it’s Google and Feedburner.

FeedBurner, which has more than 400,000 publishers on its network, will beef up Google’s own AdSense publisher network, particularly among blogs, where FeedBurner is stronger than Google, said Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, during a press conference.

Likewise, Google advertisers will benefit from an expanded ad inventory and ad distribution platform. Finally, FeedBurner shares Google’s philosophy of helping end-users find information online with FeedBurner focused on blogs and feeds and Google on search.

That sounds to me like a focus on advertising - not on finding information - we’ll see what happens.

I just read that Google is considering buying FeedBurner. At first it didn’t really surprise or worry me - but then I read this:

With this deal, Google can integrate both AdWords and, soon, DoubleClick into FeedBurner’s feeds as well as create more sophisticated RSS search tools.

I have just one thing to say - if Google does buy FeedBurner and does put ads on my feed I will switch back to using just my default WordPress feed - even if it means I don’t get the cool stats that I get now.

Well, you can’t say I didn’t give it a real try - after sticking with Google Reader I just couldn’t get over the problems I was having - so I’m back at Bloglines with an updated (shareable) list of feeds.

Basically I liked the reading interface and the fact that I couldn’t accidentally click on a folder and mark everything read - but that’s about it. I hate that I couldn’t resize the left column or see how many posts I really had to read (100+ means diddly squat when you subscribe to as much as I do).

I’ll still keep an eye on Google Reader to see if they make any significant upgrades - but until then, it’s back to my first choice

Technorati Tags: bloglines, google reader

So today I switched to Google Reader. My husband has been raving about it - and a bunch of librarian buddies were using it at CIL. Here are my first impressions.

1. I can’t share my subscription list - just individual posts (unless someone tells me otherwise)
2. I can’t widen the left column to see full titles and number of new posts (and I can’t scroll left to right either)
3. sometimes I don’t want to scroll - sometimes I can see everything that is new on one screen - but if I don’t scroll things aren’t marked new. I know I can change that option - but then I’m back where I was with Bloglines.

So - is the change worth it? I don’t know - I’ll stick to it for a bit, but right now I’m getting annoyed at little things that I was used to before.

Is something up with Bloglines or are people writing less? I usually have hundreds of things to read (thousands if I do my homework like I should) - and yet I’ve been able to keep up lately. Also, all del.icio.us feeds are looking wierd and not very helpful at all. I might have to join a lot of you and check out Google Reader.

Technorati Tags: bloglines, rss feeds

Thanks Sarah for pointing this out to me!!

There’s a tool called RSStalker that lets you track price changes on Amazon by RSS. You can have feeds for your entire wishlist or a specific item.

Also, from the RSStalker site:

Amazon.com doesn’t advertise it, but they have a 30 day price drop policy. If you bought something from them and they lower the price within 30 days, just fill out a form and they’ll refund you the difference.

So, armed with the knowledge of these 2 things, you can now save yourself some money - or at least get some money back!! Awesome!

Technorati Tags: amazon, rss

Just had to share this - it’s kinda funny.

via: RSS Compendium & bLaugh

Christina quotes an email from Ulrich’s Web:

The new “RSS Available” Advanced Search limiter makes it possible for users to identify the growing number of periodicals that are providing headlines, recent issues or other content via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). An RSS feed provides content via XML files that are then read by an RSS reader or web browser. CSA is adding RSS availability data to thousands of individual Ulrich's records so that users can learn about the various frequencies, formats, and providers of these content-delivery feeds. Ulrich's records also display the URL of the RSS feed(s) for the periodical. Users may create their own lists of RSS feed URLs in Ulrichsweb.com, click on the URL to link to the RSS feed, or cut and paste the URL into their preferred RSS reader.

This is one of those tools I didn’t know about until library school (Ulrich’s that is - not RSS) - and it’s so very handy!!

Thanks Steven for pointing me to Marshall Kirkpatrick’s post on keeping up.

RSS feeds make it possible to consume far more information at a faster pace than would otherwise be possible for the human brain. That said, many people experience a new level of information overload once they begin reading feeds. Here’s an overview of how I read thousands of RSS feeds without breaking a sweat.

Give it a read if you’re interested in how the Marshall kept up in order to write for TechCrunch. I can’t imagine having thousands of feeds in my reader!

Yesterday, while I was working on my final projects, news of LibWorm spread throughout the biblioblogosphere. LibWorm is a “Librarianship RSS and Current Awareness Search” by MedWorm's Frankie Dolan and David Rothman.

LibWorm let’s you search for library news across over 1000 RSS feed (including blogs, journal tables of contents and more). I need to poke more before I give my official opinion - but the one thing missing is a way to see what feeds are included. If I find a journal RSS I want to share with others, I want to have an easy way to find out if it’s included and I did a few searches and browsed a bit, it was easy to find news (which is the point) but not the sources for the news (not the point - but a handy addition so that I don’t waste people’s time with suggestions).

Read more from David himself or from LibWorm’s About page.

I just found this list of 56 services you can ping with your new blog posts - I’m not going to ping them all, but I did find a few I didn’t know about.

I’m wondering what everyone searches for and watches in their ego search feed. My search (blended by FeedBlendr) reads:

Blogdigger search for nicole engard, Technorati Search for: http://web2learning.net, Yahoo! Search: “nicole engard” or “nicole c. engard” or “nicole c engard”, Technorati Search for: “what i learned today” AND (nicole OR engard), Technorati Search for: nicole engard, BlogPulse Search Results for: nicole engard and Bloglines Search: “Bcite:web2learning.net”.

I’m wondering what other people search for and if I’m missing something important

I am considering using Feed2JS on our intranet (after listening to Meredith & Paul at Internet Librarian) - I’m still going to give it a whirl, but I’ll be more cautious before I use it on any of our sites outside of the firewall after reading this warning from RSS4Lib.

If you run your own copy of Feed2JS on your own server (rather than using Feed2JS’s public version), unscrupulous folks can borrow your script — and your bandwidth — to repurpose other RSS feeds from other sites without your knowledge or permission.

There is hope though.

Feed2JS.org offers directions for restricting Feed2JS to the feeds you want to be reused.

If you’re still unsure of what RSS Aggregator to use, you might want to give CNET’s comparison chart & reviews a look. They offer a comparison chart for Bloglines, Rojo, Google Reader, FeedDemon, and Newsgator Inbox 2.6 for Outlook.

Meredith Farkas & Paul Pival gave a fun presentation on RSS (something I use tons of) & JS (something I don’t use much of).

Using JS and RSS Paul & Meredith showed us how to create a dynamic subject page for your library site. The problem with traditional subject pages is that they aren’t updated often, they’re not easy to update (HTML required), and since no field is static a static page isn’t the right solution. Why not use some of the tools mentioned to create a dynamic page that pulls news, journal updates, and new books from RSS feeds? You can even mix together RSS feeds into one consolidated feed using RSS Mix (doesn’t show the source), KickRSS (registration required), or FeedBlendr (shows the source & no registration).

Another suggestion from Meredith - if you don’t have access to edit your library’s website easily, why not create a blog and put the updates there - then use JS to pull in the RSS feed to your subject guide - that means the webmaster only has to update the page once (to add the JS code) and then you can make updates whenever you want. This works great for people with locked down servers and websites.

One last tool lets you add an RSS feed reader widget on your site. Grazr imports an OPML and lets you put the reader right on your website. Meredith used my IL2006 OPML as an example!

Up until now I have been using PHP to parse RSS feeds for our intranet - I’m going in to work on Monday to switch to JS. Meredith & Paul have provided a nice long list of tools here on their wiki.

Technorati Tags: il2006, il06

The Special Libraries Association (SLA) announced today that it has partnered with NewsGator to launch an online service that delivers RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to the desktops of thousands of information professionals. This exclusive service is free only to members of SLA, and is available at www.sla.org as part of the SLA News Connections.

I got a chance to have a peak at this new reader - it’s pretty nifty - especially for RSS newbies. They have predefined sets of feeds that people can subscribe to with one click - which is very handy when you’re new to all of this.

Read the Press Release.

I don’t know if this is Bloglines or me. Yesterday, I imported the IL OPML a few times and deleted the folder over and over - I might have accidentally deleted my mailing lists folder!! Or Bloglines got rid of it - who knows. I’m a little annoyed either way because I had to email a lot of list owners to get my bloglines email subscribed to the lists - and now I have to start all over