RSS Feeds. . Good or Bad?

RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS check-ins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.
RSS-aware programs called news aggregators are popular in the web logging community. Many weblogs make content available in RSS. A news aggregator can help you keep up with all your favourite weblogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them.

Rss Feeds are a relatively new thing to me. It’s only in the last few months where I have recognised I have a need for a greater flow of information from a wider veriety of sources that they have become a useful tool. In practicing being creative, my mind is constantly searching for new inspiration and references, visual or otherwise, even if its news or cultural information to aid contextualisation of work. Using Rss feeds allows for a free flow of updated information available if and when you need it.
Obviously there is a lot of spurious information that is not required, but this does not detract away from an Rss feeds usefulness. Information pops up as concise bulletins allowing the user to pick what precise information they need. Unlike using email, where the interface is user defined, Rss feeds create a safer and easier way of receiving information by eradicating the need to use personal information or having inbox’s clogged with junk and spam. For people that don’t have the time to browse or for people who are just plain lazy, Rss feeds play a huge part in the free flow of information and complement the needs of people who use the web.


Web feeds have some advantages compared to receiving frequently published content via an email:
• Users do not disclose their email address when subscribing to a feed and so are not increasing their exposure to threats associated with email: spam, viruses and identity theft.
• Users do not have to send an unsubscribe request to stop receiving news. They simply remove the feed from their aggregator.
• The feed items are automatically sorted in that each feed URL has its own sets of entries (unlike an email box where messages must be sorted by user-defined rules and pattern matching).

As far as I can see, the capacity for processing information is increasing, as are the tools created to fulfil the information’s needs. Rss feeds are just a beautiful reaction to a need for more efficient means of information transfer and I feel further substantiates network philosophy.