Thing #8 - RSS Feeds and Readers

I am not a big web surfer. That may sound ignorant, but it bores me - particularly because most of the time I cannot think of anything to "surf" for - and I generally only hit the web if I have a specific purpose (research, online shopping, etc.). My husband is a huge web surfer so I immediately thought the RSS feeds might prove to be more beneficial to him than myself. However, after doing this "thing" I found blogs that pertain to things I am interested in (which I had never done before) and added them to my Google Reader. For example, we are thinking about getting an English Bulldog, so I added a Bulldog blog. I also added a photography blog, some library blogs, CNN, etc. And I must be an over achiever because I even added more than five! I really like how it's all there in one place. Now I can sit down and peruse this instead of trying to figure out what to browse for! It's really going to guide me to information I would not normally seek out. For school use, teachers can add blogs pertaining to their discipline or even to Texas educators in general. Libraries can do the same (TLA, ALA, library blogs, etc.). I subscribe to a library listserv so now I am curious as to whether or not those posts can be added to my Google Reader. I showed my husband my Google Reader account thinking that he might be interested in creating one for himself, but he was not interested at all. He said he was all about being efficient, but he doesn't see what is so different about that than just keeping all your favorite blogs and news sites on your "Favorites" list on the tool bar. He is familiar with how all his websites are formatted and is comfortable perusing them in their various formats. That makes sense too. On the other hand, I'm sure Google Reader has a lot more options to take advantage of that I have not explored. Google Reader seems particularly useful if you are trying to access the feeds on a cell phone, etc. To each their own...