Monthly Archives: September 2007

RSS — A better way

Posted on September 24, 2007 by John Kisha

Between spam and advertising and subscribed newsletters, the volume of email pouring into my inbox was starting to become overwelming. It was taking almost 5 minutes to download all of my email in the morning before I could even begin to respond to the important email from clients.
I was using filters in Outlook, which sorted my email into the various categories so that at least only the important messages were left in my inbox, but the time to wait for that initial download, plus the temtation to read the newsletters and advertising as it came in was wasting my time.

So, I started on a crusade, I immediately started visiting all of the sites that were sending me email–subscribed or not–and if I really wanted to continue being updated by them, I looked for one of those little orange RSS images and subscribed to their RSS feed. Then I unsubscribed to their newsletter(s).

Rather than using Outlook to manage my feeds, I decided to use the RSS reader that comes free with MS Internet Explorer. The main reason is that didn't want to be disturbed by incoming feeds, as these could become as time wasting as incoming email newsletters.

Now, at the end of the day, or whenever I have time, I just open IE and click on the feeds to see what's new, keep up with technology or security advisories, read the NYT news headlines, etc.; and I am no longer tempted by the constant barage of newsletters that flow into my inbox each day.  Read more... (381 words, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)

This is a preview of RSS — A better way. Read the full post (381 words, estimated 1:31 mins reading time)
Posted in General | Leave a comment