Further thoughts on RSS

I must have been living in a very sheltered tower in my pre-RSS aggregator days. Every so often I would find a new website, look at it and, if I liked it, I would add it to my favourites for a return visit sometime in the future.

Now, however, I've unwittingly unleashed the power of portals with RSS feeds. These are sites that provide links to many other sites, usually around a particular theme. Some of them are updated several times each day, alerting me to vast numbers of interesting websites.

Part of the problem is that I want to look through each new site's archives, so when I've eventually worked my way through them, the sheer quantity of "stuff" to be looked at will gradually decline (assuming that the rate at which I add new sites will also decline).

The Guardian and the BBC are famous portals covering far more than just strict news, while Yahoo tries to cover everything but allows you to personalise your choice of content. Ones that I've discovered recently include Micro Persuasion, Web Pro News and Wired. The first two of these are definitely technology-themed, but Wired is much wider. Space and Live Science also contain links to fascinating top stories in their respective fields.

Can you resist the lure of these sites? Do not eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge!