Work For Me: Media Meditation #6

Click. Click. Click.

Was today the day? Had he finally put something new up?

I check the blog of a webcomic artist I love on a daily basis to see if he's updated.

He never has. Not since October 23rd of last year. I just wait and check and wait.


And then we learned about RSS.
RSS, usually expanded to "really simple syndication," is a way of having your favorite web content find you instead of you finding it. Amazing, isn't it? All the clicking and checking of "dailies" I spend at least an hour on every day (usually more) can be simplified into a page that takes minutes to read. How does RSS work, though? Easy:



Web applications like Google Reader make it simple to check and stay updated with the sites of your choosing. Why I never did this before is a mystery.

Things like RSS and Google Alerts (which I will get to in a minute) are part of a huge technological shift on the internet. Many people still live like the internet is brand new and impossible to navigate; these tools are there to make life easier for everyone. It's sort of like Tweetdeck for your whole internet life. By making things easier to navigate, I save time and can spend less time just goofing around on the internet.

Which is great. I can go from this:


To this:


No longer am I a slave to the clock! No longer do I work for the internet! I can maybe go outside once in a while! RSS, you have changed my life. But I haven't even gotten to your cousin, Google Alerts yet!

Google Alerts are even sort of better, especially for the problem I outlined earlier about my webcomic artist. You can set an alert and it will e-mail you updates about it. I set one for Champlain College and now get daily updates about people who have blogged about it, tweeted about it, or what it has been doing in the news.

Again, it's the technological shift. Both of these also point to a cultural shift; our lives are so fast-paced and crazy that these technological advances came to be. They are important because they were bred from necessity, and where there is a need, there will be new technology. My neocortex isn't weighed down with empty facts, and my limbic brain isn't overrun by sensory information from all the websites I'm checking. It's win-win.

Mitch Clem still hasn't updated his blog. But now, I don't check it every day. I just wait for an e-mail and hope that he'll add something soon. In the meantime, though, I'm not really concerned. I've been reading some great blogs through my RSS reader, and I recently found just the darndest video about Kevin Costner via an alert.



So really, what are you waiting for? Have my persuasive techniques failed? Google Alerts and RSS will change your life. Try them. They might even give you enough time to go sledding or start a webcomic of your very own.