Getting The Full Picture

RSS is a great way to bypass the bias of main stream media and monitor topics you care about

If you are in any highly specialized field, such as law, security, technology, or medicine, keeping track of relevant news and events is a constant challenge. This is equally true if you are looking to stay abreast of current events and have trouble breaking out of the groupthink bubble that you get from mainstream media (MSM). Yes, there are differing opinions out there on current events that you will never hear if Google news and major media sites (CNN, MSNBC, et al.) are your primary sources of information.

If you have never heard about it, there is a (mostly) free and easily accessible alternative to letting others (MSM) decide what is relevant news, that puts the power of choice back in your hands. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed protocol that allows users to easily subscribe to updates from websites that host topics that they find of interest. You can subscribe to these updates using a myriad of RSS apps and services that are available on every hardware platform, from PCs to mobile devices.

Once subscribed, your RSS app or service will monitor the websites you have chosen for new content on a periodic basis and display them for you to read later. Depending on the app or service you use, you can subscribe to topics instead of individual websites and have a continuous stream of news presented to you on the topic that far exceeds in depth and breath anything you will receive from “traditional” news sources where someone else is deciding what is relevant for you to know.

Starting out with RSS is easy, and Feedly is a good (and free) way to start exploring the power of this information channel. It is accessible both directly on the web as well as on apps for every platform. From there, depending on your needs, there are various upgrades you can get to Feedly and other RSS providers that will allow you to aggregate more sources of information into your information feed, including newsletters, Twitter, etc. as well as automate what you do with these updates.

Don’t fall into the trap of letting others decide what is relevant for you to know. Check out RSS and discover the world of information that is at your fingertips. And yes, I use RSS as well to allow anyone to subscribe to my updates.