Impressions on Blogs and RSS Feeds

My early impressions of using a blog were quite positive. I had previously expected the experience of creating and maintaining a blog to be complicated and time consuming. This week taught me that I could not have been more wrong. Creating a blog takes between 2-5 minutes. I did not have a Gmail account and, since I was using Blogger which requires the user to have a Gmail account, I had to create one. Once I did that, the process was smooth, easy and extremely uncomplicated. Blogger guided me through the various steps necessary and, before I knew it, I had created my own blog! I was pleasantly surprised at the many features which are available to add and personalize a blog. The settings, layout and monetize tabs are filled with add-ons which can enhance and customize one’s blog as well as enable it to cater to a specific audience or field. In addition, the blogger has the ability to edit any post at any time and to change any add-on or customization without difficulty- another huge advantage for a beginner like me!
My early impressions of using a RSS feeder were positive as well – although I found it more difficult than creating blog. I used Google Reader to create RSS feeds. Google Reader’s website has a presentation on how RSS feeds work. After watching it, I was able to choose several news websites to follow such as CBC, BBC, FoxNews, CNN, ABC and MSNBC. I found it more difficult to put RSS feeders in my blog simply because I did not know how to add them. I “played around” with the blog for a while, exploring the various options in each tab, until I discovered that, in the layout section of the blog, there is an option to add feeds. I picked three websites to follow: CBC, FoxNews and CNN. Initially, I was not used to having all the updated news on these news sites in one place. It felt strange not having to check CBC, BBC, FoxNews, CNN, ABC and MSNBC individually. In addition, the layout was different than in the actual website and I had to adjust to the new layout. A day later, I began to appreciate RSS feeds. I could receive all my news updates in one place – which saved time and energy. The format was clear and the information presented was exactly what I would have searched for in the actual website! The same is true of the three news sites I chose to follow on my blog.