RSS, the other half of the story

Social media tools and how we as physiotherapists can use them is only half of the story. What good is the great web content that we are creating for the physiotherapy community unless be easily accessed? People have a limited amount of time to check websites regularly – few people are going to be bothered to check more than a couple of their favourite websites every day, if that!  You don’t need to. The unique feature of Web 2.0 and innovation that has increased the reach of user generated Web content is a technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

RSS allows people to subscribe to a website to automatically receive regular updates. The RSS feed of a website notifies a ‘feed aggregator’ (such as Google Reader or Netvibes) that there is new content available on that website and sends it the text and images. You can then read the website updates in one place, your newsreader, without having to visit the website itself.   The importance of the feed aggregator is that it is a personal space on the Web where you can collect RSS feeds from different websites, therefore removing the need for you to visit all these websites to keep up to date with the information that they provide.

Have a look at this video for a pictorial explanation:

So, now that you know all about RSS feeds you need to sign up for a few.  Here is what you need to do:

1. First of all you need to sign up to a feed aggregator.  I use Netvibes but the easiest and one I would recommend to you is Google Reader.
2. Once you have done this go to your favourite websites and look for the RSS feed which is normally displayed with the icon.
3. Click on this icon or where is says ‘rss feed’ and follow the instructions that appear.  Basically at this point you will be adding the URL (the web address) of the feed to your aggregator.
4. Once you have done that any updates that are made to the website will appear in your feed aggregator.

One of the most useful things we as health care professionals can sign up to is the RSS feed for our favourite journals or to key word searches from PubMed.  This automatically brings new information on the specific topics that we are interested in straight to one place on the Web that is personal to us making the prospect of evidencing our practice a much less daunting task.

Related posts:

1. RSS feeds for physiotherapy
2. Dealing with too much information
3. Web technology, autonomous learning and professional development in physiotherapy
4. Personal Learning Environments for Physiotherapists
5. Using Google Reader