Tuesday October 25, 2022; 11:18 AM EDT
- There are many paths for using a rich software tool, and it's a pleasure to think about the choices. I've been using the new FeedLand RSS reader with the understanding that calling it an RSS reader isn't adequate. There's more going on.#
- With that in mind, let me jot down some notes here about some of what catches my eye with the software.#
- One path I'd like to describe starts with someone contributing a good RSS feed to the FeedLand collection.#
- Once an RSS feed is in the FeedLand collection, anyone can subscribe to it, and having subscribed, a user can add the feed to a category list that the user also creates. Having a few categories for feeds shapes and streamlines personal use of the content.#
- FeedLand looks for updates to the feeds regularly, and so a user doesn't have to worry about that, and doesn't have to visit site after site to get news and information.#
- When you look at the new items in your feed collection, they are displayed with a Like icon. Clicking this is a way of alerting other members of the community that a particular item might be worth their time. (Just as contributing a new feed offers a recommendation to the community . . . )#
- Next to the Like icon is a Share icon. If you want to register a few thoughts about the item via a linkblog and, if you wish, via Twitter, click this icon and take some brief notes. It will publish both notes and the item's web address in a flash. (The smooth interface between Radio3 and Twitter makes that pairing a good one to use here, but that's not the only option.)#
- The link-blogging icon is very important because clicking it is one of the ways we stop being just consumers and start producing media for others to read. The further we can go to integrate writing with community-building, organizing, and activism, the more powerful our attention to RSS feeds can become. Hence the clues in the opening FeedLand documents about community are tantalizing to consider.#
- The closer the tools for reading are to the tools for writing, the better, right?#
- As I got used to the FeedLand software, I took an interest especially in the idea of news products. Not only can a user share feeds with others, and comment via link-blogging, but a user can organize a group of feeds for use on a web page outside FeedLand. This begins the work of sharing the power of RSS feeds with people not accustomed to using them.#
- A news product organizes feeds into one or more categories. This shaping and focusing of news is very promising. As you know, the whole Breitbart concept was to flood the social media space with mediocre (or worse) and sensationalizing items, building gut-level emotional reactions and making it harder to find reliable news. By shaping the best feeds on a subject into a focused news product, and offering it in one place, a user of FeedLand says, in effect, we hope to enter the post-Breitbart, post-Bannon information age. We need to do so.#
- As a simple experiment in a focused news product, I gathered all the NASA RSS feeds I could find and placed them in a single category that sits as the first tab in my RSS Feeds from Outer Space news product page. I think you get the picture--it's a much-needed public service to focus quality feeds on a topic. Having seen how strong a sense of NASA's work I get from skimming and reading items in this tab, I am confident that other kinds of focused feed presentations can be worked up conveniently using FeedLand. #
- Most of these news products by early users now appear as the only content on a web page. But when they begin to be built into more complex web pages, the feeds on a public issue can be in one column, say, and information about how to join a group and participate in activism on that issue could appear in the sidebar, for example. The closer the news feed is to the tools for participation, the better, right?#
- Those are some early impressions I've gathered, but this is not a comprehensive listing of the powers of the software, for sure.#