Feed Me

A simple click or two and on the above and you can "frequently updated information" available at your neuron tips. Well, not the above above, which is just a static image (sorry), but icons like it on web pages, typically nesting at the bottom.

It's a "Feed" button and one of the more popular feeds are RSS Feeds. Which I thought stood for Really Something Stupid, so never gave it much further thought than tonight when I was trying to decide if I wanted to put a Windows news gadget on my desktop.

Or rather, having decided, trying to get it in a fashion of news broadcasting that suited my needs. I first tried Google News and learned two things: RSS is actually Really Simple Syndication. Followed by this, I realized I was evidently Really Someone Stupid.

I clicked on the orange icon like I was supposed to do. According to Windows I would then see options for subscribing to the different feeds available. What I saw was:

I read and reread the Google instructions which informed me I could simply put the address in any reader... I clicked on the orange thingy again, hoping I maybe clicked wrong or something and still the above appeared. So I gave up on Google News (thinking to myself how good news would it be anyway) and went to the NY Times.

There after clicking the orange, and another "sub-orange" I actually got something that made some more sense to me, with the words "subscribe to this feed".

News at last and I could have stopped. But I thought science might be more my linking, so I thought I might subscribe to the Science Blog I have listed on my blog; but it would be through my desktop gadget. No such luck, as I discovered Its orange wanted me to use a host of different readers I'd never used before...

Meantime, I decided that aesthetically I didn't like gadgets on my desktop anyway and removed it.

I actually don't have anything on my desktop except the background; even the recyle bin is hidden. I use buttons on my toolbar for frequently used things and prefer a wide open, uncluttered desktop. The gadget idea was half-whim and half-thinking I should do a better job of keeping up with affairs of the world.

But on the other hand, is that even possible? I mean, even if I get the whole RSS thing mastered, and only get the feeds I'm interested in, how does one handle all of it? By handle I mean process, not just skim and sort as if by doing that we are actually turning the feed into nutrition for the brain. Does anyone have time to do anything meaningful with all this fed content?

And what about the content providers? Have you ever wondered who it is on the other end pumping out all that "frequently updated content" for you to ingest?

I mean besides that engineer guy who's written something like one million wikipedia articles.

Or are we all one in the same, just taking information in and regurgitating it back to one another with no  pause -- who has the time -- for digestion?