How Do You Use RSS?

It has been almost three years since I started using an RSS reader to track websites. And today I use it for much the same reason as when I started: I subscribe to feeds of websites that I check often and then use the reader to catch up on those pages at my leisure, knowing that the newest material is always there waiting for me. It’s like having a magazine made up of various sources of my choice.

That’s just one person’s RSS story, and we would like to hear yours. If you are reading this weblog, you probably have a NewsGator, FeedDemon or NetNewsWire account or are using RSS through your Outlook program or your mobile phone. And no doubt, there are things about NewsGator, FD or NNW that you like, others that you don’t, and some features that you can’t live without or perhaps can’t live with.

So tell us: How do you use RSS? In your reader? On your phone? At the grocery store? In the park? Which NewsGator features are most useful? Which are the least helpful? Has RSS improved the way you work or the way you interact with the Internet? Do you save time using RSS? What have you learned by accident, by just using the product?

As an incentive, we are offering NewsGator product licenses for the best stories and use cases, horror and otherwise, including popular products like FeedDemon (for Windows users), NetNewsWire (for Mac folks), NewsGator Go for your mobile device or NewsGator Inbox (for Outlook), most of them a $30 value. We think NewsGator offers a good feed-reading experience, but we want to know what you think.

So don’t be shy. Send us an email at newsgatortales@newsgator.com and tell us your NewsGator story. We are all ears. We will choose the best stories, print them (with your permission) and announce prize winners soon in this space.

Comments

[Paul Mabray]

We are curious to know if people ever use brands rss for products, prices, events, recipes or news (the feeds we give to people off all of our websites). We are trying to see if a consumer goods product can leverage RSS for helping spread their brand message.

for an example look at the bottom of the page of http://www.renteriawines.com/renteria/index.jsp

Inertia - Powering the Wine Revolution

---Paul Mabray - CEO

[Craig Lachman]

Paul,

I just sent you an email but will briefly respond here.

Your question speaks to where we’re now taking the syndication services side of our business (click over to http://www.newsgatorwidgets.com). Yes, many of our customers have been media firms (which makes sense). Recently, however, we’ve been working with many more retail, “consumer brand” firms to spread their messages. One example is the “Rhett Butler” widget that St. Martin’s Press is using to count down the days until the new Gone With the Wind novel is released (http://www.rhettbutlerspeople.com/widget.html).

Amazon uses RSS to advise when books are available, non-profits that we work with are using RSS to announce events via widgets. So, yes, consumer goods products can effectively leverage RSS to spread their brand message.

[Jim Sims]

I'm a software developer and make lots of tools for myself, however, lately I have been making tools which leverage RSS for businesses.

One example is a tool that is used by management to push information to sales & marketing people. With RSS one gets information out immediately. These tools include several other industry specific widgets (converters of all kinds including force in Newtons, video players with auto download, OS X text to .mp3 to push audio files to iPod using sales guys, etc.), these widgets are valuable enough to their work that the RSS feed stays visible.

When one is making such tools for an idividual you can make cool, small custom interfaces.

[M.P.Kumaran Kutty]

Dear Sir,

I only want the rss feeds to use in my blog