Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Thing 4 - Current Awareness - Twitter, RSS and Pushnote

As Meatloaf likes to say, two out of three ain't bad.  Poor grammar aside, this week's thing includes two tools that I make use of regularly, twitter and RSS (for me Google Reader).

I've used Twitter mainly to follow my library's activity and other feeds on topics that I want to learn more about, for myself and my work.  I have been following the CPD23 twitter feed, my library's Twitter feed and several others through my Google Reader.  Since starting this project, I've "branded" a Twitter feed for myself, mainly to use to follow others, but it would be a way to promote the blog when I've updated a post.

I originally used Bloglines as my RSS feeder and it worked really well.  Then, like Mark Twain, the reports of its death were an exaggeration.  I had switched to Google Reader at this point and didn't go back.  One of the nice features of Bloglines is that once you read a message, if you don't note/highlight it, it disappears and you don't have to see it again.  With Google Reader, I can view new items or all items, but I haven't found a way to see all new items and only those items that I've starred. 

I wasn't familiar with Pushnote before reading this week's Thing, but it does seem like another way to use one tool to do a connect with a number of sites in the same place.  Any tool that makes things easier without having a large learning curve could be a help in keeping up with what is going on in the larger world of librarianship.

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