I've been using RSS feeds since October 2007 when my last computer blew up and I got a new one with a widescreen monitor and a couple of sidebar options bundled in. I chose to use the Google Desktop sidebar and plugged in a couple of packaged news feeds. I currently have a BBC World News feed and a custom feed that collates stories from AP International News, C4N Latest News, the local paper, three Guardian feeds, Reuters World News and a couple of blogs. Before I joined Twitter, I also had a few friends' Twitter feeds running in there too. Subsequently I've had a couple of Twitter applications on the sidebar, but alas they seem to periodically stop working (presumably a certification problem). I am therefore getting ready to leave behind the rather limited Google sidebar and find something a bit more flexible. I have no idea what I might find.
My use of feeds is not limited to the sidebar, however. When I started at library school, I wrote myself a web page to collate feeds from a number of library news sites. As for blogs, until recently I've tended simply to follow them casually from my browser bookmarks rather than setting up a newsreader. Since I started this blog, though, I've been using Blogger's internal newsreader to keep abreast of those blogs I've chosen to 'follow'.
My web browser of choice, Opera, offers a limited newsreading facility (Opera Portal) but I don't use it. Depending on how my sidebar search goes, I might well end up cobbling something together myself which will be much more to my tastes than any third-party feed-aggregating portal.
No Man in Gown, or Page in Petty-Coat;
A Woman to my knowledge, yet I cann't (If I should dye) make Affidavit on't.
Do you not twitter Gentlemen?
- Thomas Jordan (c.1620-1685?)
Do you not twitter Gentlemen?
- Thomas Jordan (c.1620-1685?)
I must confess to having been somewhat sceptical about Twitter at first. After all, it's just an upside down SMS-supporting forum-cum-blog with an insanely small character limit. But it is also surprisingly effective and curiously fun. I first signed up with the intention of using it simply as a form of feed aggregation, but soon found myself sucked into its strange world of carefully honed brevity and flagrant punning. Twitter is ridiculous; wilfully so; and therein lies a key strength: Twitter has an innate sense of humour. It's also a very convenient way of distributing news (and gossip): a sort of interactive ticker-tape machine. Indeed, it has generally rendered my sidebar feeds redundant, as I tend to pay more attention to Twitter than to the RSS.
I made my first tweet at 11:11 pm, on the 24th April 2010. "Hello World!", I said, as is customary, followed 37 minutes later by "I honestly don't know what this is for." Eleven minutes after that I wrote "By which, I mean, I understand the potential benefits of an SMS-based blog, but there my grip meets its pommel. Why am <i>I</i> here?", and then, after another six minutes had elapsed: "But enough existential witterings. I tweet therefore I am..." The next day I was still not impressed by Twitter: "Nope. Still not impressed by this. Doesn't even stalk people properly when you follow them. Twitter me not...", but by the 27th I was posting things like "The hole in the library roof is showering forth great gobs of rain (as usual)." I was beginning to see the purpose of this thing: "Now I see the purpose of this thing! It's to keep me away from the mundane and humdrum task of writing a briefing paper. It's good at it." It is indeed very good at it.
The above were the tweets of KingConstance: the name derived from the OED's entry for "twitter" :
‘Really, Mrs. Kingconstance,’
Miss Spice twittered excitedly,
‘you are too kind!’
Miss Spice twittered excitedly,
‘you are too kind!’
- Sarah Grand (1854-1943)
I've already discussed in previous blog posts (almost all of them, I suspect) my decision on 21st June to launch a second Twitter account (SaintEvelin) so as to allow KingConstance a more consistent regality unpolluted by plebeian tweeting on subjects such as library work. Twitter does not support the use of two accounts simultaneously, and so, in the interests of practicality, I am now using a third-party web-client called Seesmic. This allows me to access and publish to both my Twitter feeds (and also my Facebook news feed): a considerably convenient state of affairs indeed. There are things about Seesmic that could be improved, but on the whole it is proving to be a useful and effective tool that suits my needs quite adequately. Other similar clients exist, but of those I've tried, Seesmic seems the best for me.
I've already discussed in previous blog posts (almost all of them, I suspect) my decision on 21st June to launch a second Twitter account (SaintEvelin) so as to allow KingConstance a more consistent regality unpolluted by plebeian tweeting on subjects such as library work. Twitter does not support the use of two accounts simultaneously, and so, in the interests of practicality, I am now using a third-party web-client called Seesmic. This allows me to access and publish to both my Twitter feeds (and also my Facebook news feed): a considerably convenient state of affairs indeed. There are things about Seesmic that could be improved, but on the whole it is proving to be a useful and effective tool that suits my needs quite adequately. Other similar clients exist, but of those I've tried, Seesmic seems the best for me.
Opera, Opera, Opera Opera Opera,
Opera, Opera, Opera Opera.
- Aysel Gürel (1929-2008)
Something that doesn't seem to be for me is the website appraisal system "Pushnote", advocated by CPD23. As stated above, my browser of choice is Opera, and Pushnote have not created a version of their application for Opera. This is understandable (if also inconvenient): on a simple analysis of market share Opera accounts for little more than 2% of web traffic. Opera users are therefore by no means a top priority for the people behind Pushnote.
I have been using the Opera browser since 2002, after taking a dislike to Netscape 6 and being amazed with the speed of Opera (in those narrowband days it was a crucial claim to be the fastest browser on the planet). I had a brief flirtation with Mozilla during the Opera 7 epoch but soon returned to the superficially more customizable Opera. My version looks nothing like the official release, owing to a steady process of cosmetic and practical reorganization over the best part of a decade (visually it has more in common with Opera 5 than the current version 11). We love each other very much (especially now that the Voice feature works again, and in spite of the new image-viewer). It may not be as quick and as sleek as Google Chrome, but speed isn't the deciding factor it once was, and Opera still seems a lot faster than the increasingly clunky Firefox (which I put up with at work) and IE (which I compare with having to cycle up a hill made from Marmite (sounds more appealing than it is)). I also like my extras too much. Chrome is a fabulous piece of no-nonsense design, but it's all smooth plastic and rivets and I really do like my nonsense. I like to be able to get the back off my browser and customize it to my needs; stick useless apps to it that I'll hardly ever use, and generally feel like I've made it my own.
Opera, then, is my comfortable pair of web-slippers, and I do not willingly tread the cold stone floor of the internet kitchen without it. This does, however, make the Pushnote application of no practical value to me. Not that I'm convinced I'd find it very worthwhile anyway (though refer to Twitter for a previous example of scepticism confounded): I see little purpose in seeing others' opinions of a site once I'm already there and am able to judge its quality for myself. The value of a rating is surely at its highest when encountered in advance, and of negligible assistance after the fact.
Meanwhile, the library community on Twitter is all a-twitter at the concept of something called Google+. I freely admit a near-complete lack of excitement about this, much as I felt with Google Wave. But I also felt the same about Facebook, and to a certain extent Twitter. One of these things I now have a genuine affection for, to the point that I have two Twitter accounts, so it just goes to show that sometimes ones expectations can be confounded.
Something that doesn't seem to be for me is the website appraisal system "Pushnote", advocated by CPD23. As stated above, my browser of choice is Opera, and Pushnote have not created a version of their application for Opera. This is understandable (if also inconvenient): on a simple analysis of market share Opera accounts for little more than 2% of web traffic. Opera users are therefore by no means a top priority for the people behind Pushnote.
I have been using the Opera browser since 2002, after taking a dislike to Netscape 6 and being amazed with the speed of Opera (in those narrowband days it was a crucial claim to be the fastest browser on the planet). I had a brief flirtation with Mozilla during the Opera 7 epoch but soon returned to the superficially more customizable Opera. My version looks nothing like the official release, owing to a steady process of cosmetic and practical reorganization over the best part of a decade (visually it has more in common with Opera 5 than the current version 11). We love each other very much (especially now that the Voice feature works again, and in spite of the new image-viewer). It may not be as quick and as sleek as Google Chrome, but speed isn't the deciding factor it once was, and Opera still seems a lot faster than the increasingly clunky Firefox (which I put up with at work) and IE (which I compare with having to cycle up a hill made from Marmite (sounds more appealing than it is)). I also like my extras too much. Chrome is a fabulous piece of no-nonsense design, but it's all smooth plastic and rivets and I really do like my nonsense. I like to be able to get the back off my browser and customize it to my needs; stick useless apps to it that I'll hardly ever use, and generally feel like I've made it my own.
Opera, then, is my comfortable pair of web-slippers, and I do not willingly tread the cold stone floor of the internet kitchen without it. This does, however, make the Pushnote application of no practical value to me. Not that I'm convinced I'd find it very worthwhile anyway (though refer to Twitter for a previous example of scepticism confounded): I see little purpose in seeing others' opinions of a site once I'm already there and am able to judge its quality for myself. The value of a rating is surely at its highest when encountered in advance, and of negligible assistance after the fact.
Meanwhile, the library community on Twitter is all a-twitter at the concept of something called Google+. I freely admit a near-complete lack of excitement about this, much as I felt with Google Wave. But I also felt the same about Facebook, and to a certain extent Twitter. One of these things I now have a genuine affection for, to the point that I have two Twitter accounts, so it just goes to show that sometimes ones expectations can be confounded.
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