Method 4

Here is the "A Dozen Ways to Two-Step" discovery exercise for Method 4, followed by my response to it:

Discovery Exercise:
1. Watch the Youtube video: Google Reader in Plain English.
2. Go to the Google Reader site and sign into your Google account.
3. You’re now ready to start subscribing to feeds.
4. Over on the left, you’ll see Add Subscription, and next to it is a little link to Discover.
5. Click on Discover to find some feeds that interest you. You can search using keywords. Try library.
6. Subscribe to 3 feeds.
7. Play around in Google Reader to see how it works. Read some of your feeds.
8. On your blog, add links to your 3 feeds and post to your blog about this exercise. (Please include “Method 4″ in the title of your blog post.) What appealed to you about these feeds? Do you see yourself using Google Reader or some other RSS Reader to keep up with certain sites now?

C's Response:
When I realized that RSS was going to be a part of this training, I looked into it just a little bit, and I subscribed to the RSS feed on Madonna's website using the Yahoo RSS reader. So, I've been well-informed on all things Madonna for the last few weeks, as I usually check the RSS reader when I go to Yahoo to check my e-mail.

I have signed up for Google Reader, and I added several feeds, including the following:

American Library Association News: http://www.ala.org/cfapps/xml/alapr.xml
Texas Library Association Blog: http://www.txlablog.org/atom.xml
New York Times: http://feeds.nytimes.com/nyt/rss/HomePage

I like having these feeds, and having them in one place. It's a convenient way to get the news I'm interested in all at once. The user still has to go to it (by going to whatever RSS reader one is using), rather than having it come to the user, so you have to remember to go check the reader, but that's ok -- it's probably better than getting hundreds of news e-mails!

I typically get my news from Google News, which aggregates the top stories in various news categories from multiple sources. RSS is rather similar, but it allows for more specialized feeds, such as ALA or a particular entertainer (Madonna -- woohoo!) I do see myself continuing to use Google Reader.