Ten RSS Hacks

Here, for no reason at all, are 10 RSS power user tips that you can use to enhance your life. Some of these you might already know, others you may not. 1) Build Feeds for Your Favorite Writers Wouldn't it be great to have a feed for your favorite columnist or journalist? Some sites, a Yahoo! News search for Dr. Mac - Bob Levitus with the Houston Chronicle. The search has a link to another feed I built to track 300,000+ topical news pages has its own RSS feed. This includes feeds for dozens of automotive make/models, like the Honda CR-V (aka Steve's Micromobile). I subscribe to this specific page on the CRV. You can also use Topix to track many top sports stars and even celebs. For example, I subscribe to the feed listed FeedShake and then stick the feed in my Firefox bookmarks toolbar as 4) Track New Audiobooks with RSS Who here likes audiobooks? I love them. Thankfully, Audible has tons of them with new ones coming in every day. How do I know? Yup, they have much more. 5) Find Cool Stuff with a del.icio.us Inbox Feed One of the most powerful tools I use to find stuff to blog about is has an RSS feed. (gada.be - a new metasearch tool. Gada.be is terrific for setting up a series of blog, news and web search feeds with just a single step instead of ten. I am going to use this method for every new client we sign. Simply type the search term and tack on gada.be/opml. For example, 7) Track Wikipedia Revisions with RSS I don't know about you, but when someone messes with recent changes page generates Thomas Hawk posts new original images every day in Flickr that are just incredible. I subscribe to RMail. It takes feeds and converts them to email subscriptions. I subscribe to a few and as they arrive in my Gmail box I have them automatically labeled RSS and archived so they don't clutter my inbox. More info 10) Take a Break with RSS OK, the previous nine tips were a lot of work. It's time for a break. Go subscribe to Roger Ebert's Eventful, surf through their listed events by tags and then subscribe to these topic feeds. Like TV listings via RSS. Whatever you do, go super size your RSS experience. It's the best tool to come along since the web browser. Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

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