RSS the big five

I built my list of 5 feeds, and then refined it, and refined it again.

I learned something from the Powerhouse Museum - Photo of the Day. I like change. I like to see something new when I look at my feeds. So I removed several that initially looked interesting, when after a few days I saw no point in checking, hoping, waiting for something to be posted. Although of course, that's still an advantage of RSS. If you are interested in something that has very few posts, at least RSS will make it easier to know when there is an update.

I decided to look for feeds from sites that were 'happening'.What could be better than the US Presidential nomination struggle between Clinton and Obama? So I chose BlogHillary and Obama HQ, both blogs produced by the candidates' enthusiastic campaign workers with lots of daily updates and comments posted.

I added ABC News; Breaking stories because news updates meet my personal criterion of a 'happening' site. I 'd like to say I've looked at it often, but probably less often than I watch TV news, which isn't that often. If I get a reference question about the news, would I go to my RSS feed, or would I go to Google, or a newspaper? The RSS feed would work well for news junkies for whom too much news is never enough.

My library service has RSS feeds from all the top news services on its website: ABC News, The Australian, BBC, CNN, etc. as well as some non-news feeds: On this day, Quote of the Day, Fashion, Movie Reviews. Have I used it in the course of my working day? The answer is no, but please don't quote me. Maybe I will make more use of it after this.

Lastly, and I left the best till last, I have joined the legion of Stephen Fry fans and I have added his blog StephenFry. I'll forgive him for not posting daily. It takes me ages to read one of his posts/essays/articles, so in his case less is more. And the RSS will let me know when there's something new.