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Last year, David created an RSS feed of articles from our daily Newsflash newsletter and wrote an article to explain how to use it http://digbig.com/4bmwq. I've come across several Blogs and content feeds of interest to auction users since then. And since I just discovered an excellent tool for organizing them, I thought this would be a good time to revisit the subject.
The nice thing about these content feeds is that they don't get filtered by email programs. Content feeds come in various formats, including RSS, Atom, and XML, and many refer to all formats as RSS, though I prefer the term content feed.
In David's article, he discussed software "readers" to keep track of content feeds. I admit, I never got around to installing a reader on my computer, because I hate downloading software in case it screws up my computer.
So I was delighted to find out about a great Web-based tool for organizing content feeds called Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com, which offers some very powerful features. And because it is Web-hosted, you can access your feeds from any computer.
I read a number of Blogs. My interests include eBay/online auctions; technology; and media. I also like to read Blogs from certain "gurus." Bloglines.com allows me to open up a page that lists all these feeds and Blogs that I track. I can organize them in folders and easily add or delete content feeds.
So why not just bookmark sites in my browser? Many Blogs are published sporadically. The Bloglines format allows me to see at a glance if there are new entries I have not yet read, and even indicates how many entries there are. There are a number of advantages to using a reader that become obvious once you begin using one.
You can try Bloglines yourself, there's no charge. There's a nice tutorial about Bloglines here: http://www.lawlibtech.com/archives/000129.html (Checkout the section on Bookmarklets, this allows you to click a button in your browser when you come across a feed, and it will add it to your Bloglines list with one click!)
Once you've signed up for Bloglines, you can add the AuctionBytes Newsflash feed, which contains the daily (Monday through Friday) articles we post at the top of our home page. Here's the URL to add: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/news.rss
Hint: Once you've got it set up, you can bring up articles from certain time periods, like a week's worth of AuctionBytes Newsflash articles at once! We include the Newsflash headline and a brief abstract of each news story in the feed; you can click on the headline to open a new window containing the fulltext of the article.
Another useful tool if you want to get alerts via email when there is a new entry to your favorite Blogs, is Blogarithm (http://www.blogarithm.com). You can receive one email every day telling you which of the Blogs that you are subscribed to have been updated, and it includes links to take you directly to those Blogs.
Here's a list of some content feeds you might find useful. The first URL goes to the main page, the second URL, with funny formatting, is the feed. If you are using Bloglines, use the second URL to "Add" to your list, if you use Blogarithm, use the first URL.
Note: If you try to use the Bloglines Bookmarklet to add a feed and get an error message, just go to your Bloglines account and manually enter the URL (after clicking on "Add"). For some reason, I had to do this with the eBay Announcement Board feeds.
AuctionBytes Newsflash
(Daily news about the online-auction industry)
http://www.auctionbytes.com
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/news.rss
eBay Marketing Announcement Board
(For announcements about new features, policies, promotions, etc.)
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/marketing.shtml
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/marketing.xml
eBay System Announcement Board
(For announcements about outages or maintenance activities.)
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.shtml
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.xml
Knarf's eBay Blog
(Published by Canadian eBayer Frank Sutherland.)
http://www.knarf.ca
http://www.knarf.ca
eBay Strategies
(Companion to Scot Wingo's book, "eBay Strategies")
http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com
http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_strategies/atom.xml
Cnet Top Stories
(5 most recent tech-related news stories from Cnet's News.com.)
http://news.com.com
http://news.com.com/2547-1_3-0-5.xml
Here are just a few of the non-auction feeds I monitor:
Rafat Ali's newsletter
http://www.paidcontent.org
http://feeds.feedburner.com/pcorg
Alan Meckler's Internet Media Commentary
http://weblogs.jupitermedia.com/meckler
http://weblogs.jupitermedia.com/meckler/index.xml
Andy Beal's Search Engine Lowdown
http://www.searchenginelowdown.com
http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/rss/seo_news_feed
Google Blog
http://www.google.com/googleblog
http://www.google.com/googleblog/atom.xml
And I can't leave out my sister's Blog. Siobhan Champ-Blackwell is Community Outreach Liaison for the Midcontinental Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Her Blog demonstrates the wide variety of Blogs available and their usefulness to targeted segments:
Bringing Health Information to the Community (BHIC)
http://medstat.med.utah.edu/blogs/BHIC
http://medstat.med.utah.edu/blogs/BHIC
One final thing you might try with RSS feeds: keeping track of items on eBay. Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome set up a Beta test of RSS feeds for popular eBay searches, delivered weekly. Check out his Blog entry about it here:
http://chris.pirillo.com/blog/_archives/2004/7/20/108793.html
And click through to the feed set-up page here if you are interested:
http://www.rssauction.com
Pluck.com created "Auction Scout," which will generate a custom RSS feed with the eBay items that match your interests:
http://www.pluck.com/product/auctionscout.aspx
Happy reading!
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