Feed Me

This week we were advised to try out Google’s free feed service, Google Reader. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of Google Reader (like I was), the idea is that happy little internet users venture off to their favourite websites and sign up for RSS “feeds”, which are then neatly collected and organised in the Reader for you to view at a glance. It’s like surfing the entire web on just one website. I had to agree that at first all of this seemed like a great idea. It made the net so much easier.

Rather than wasting valuable seconds typing in web addresses I could just see all the good stuff right there in front of me, clear as day.

Pretty much all of my favourite websites offered these RSS feeds so…well…that was just great.

But a few days later, when I signed in to the Reader I was granted with a surprise…literally thousands of articles. Thousands!

Reader was supposed to make the web easier but instead it just made things ridiculously complicated. How was I going to be able to sift through thousands of articles? And even if I did do that, by tomorrow there would be hundreds more for me.

I suppose that Reader is perhaps more suited to people with a very clear idea of the kind of things they want. When I go online I tend to look at a wide range of different websites, covering lots of subjects. This is all good when I can click onto any website and browse its content at will, but when everything is collected together and handed to me in one big bundle, all this information that I’d usually find entertaining or interesting now seems like too much of a chore.

So I guess that RSS feeds and Google Reader area good idea and very useful to somebody with a niche interest and/or checks the reader regularly enough to avoid getting buried under the weight of information coughed up. Perhaps once I fiddle around with the reader and fine tune my website subscriptions until the whole thing becomes manageable, Google Reader will turn out be an extremely useful tool. But until then, I’ve got 1000+ articles to get through…

Photo Courtesy of bytelove.com

Newspapers In "Real Real Trouble" Says Guardian Online Editor

The outgoing head of the most popular newspaper website in Britain warned this week of a possible bleak future for numerous titles across the country.

Neil McIntosh, who was responsible for introducing blogs and video reporting to guardian.co.uk, predicted that regional newspapers may die out completely as online journalism becomes more popular. 

McIntosh singled out Scottish newspapers The Scotsman and The Herald as titles particularly in danger of disappearing, as he considered them unappealing to local readers.

"The Herald and Scotsman titles are in real real trouble" he said "It's a dreadful mess. It's a tough time all around but pain is being felt harder in the regions than it is in the nationals"

He added that both newspapers had failed to see the importance of journalism on the web, having recently downsized the output of their online counterparts, while other titles have worked hard to improve and expand on theirs, with much success. 

Online journalism has shown itself to be a hugely successful alternative to print in recent years, as this article from journalism.co.uk shows. Not only are newspapers and magazines losing the battle for readers but McIntosh also suggests that continuing to publish them "doesn't make financial sense", as their online alternatives make much more money through advertising  

His comments echo those of Emily Bell, the director of digital content for Guardian News and Media, who argued in a recent blogpost that even some national newspapers could be at risk of disappearing under falling readership and revenue. 

While Bell predicts that The Mirror and The Express are the most at risk because of commitments to investors and shareholders, McIntosh believes that The Independent, which is Britain's least read daily newspaper and recently sacked 90 of its staff, is the obvious choice. He suggested that the paper may stop publishing an edition everyday or it could possibly become free. 

Unfortunately it is a very real possibility that other newspapers and magazines may have no choice but to do the same over time if they are to have any chance of surviving alongside the world wide web. 

For The Oldies

Today we were asked to find sources and contacts for a hypothetical story on old people that use the internet. Here's what I found:

http://www.businessstrata.com/Win/News-Archive/Marketing-News/?storyId=116 - talks about "formidable older people"

These articles talk about an opposite viewpoint, that older people don't use the net:http://news.bbc.c.ouk/1/hi/technology/5146222.stm and this recent article


Contacts?: UK Online Centres (provides courses on how to use the internet): http://www.ukonlinecentres.com/consumer/content/view/99/158/lang,en/

Help The Aged: http://www.helptheaged.org.uk/en-gb/WhatWeDo/AboutUs/ContactUs/. They also publish tips on how to use the internet at http://www.helptheaged.org.uk/en-gb/AdviceSupport/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/ComputersAndInternet/default.htm

Browse on Myspace for over 60s: http://browseusers.myspace.com/Browse/browse.aspx?MyToken=633628344725394010

Photo Courtesy of malvernhills.gov.uk