How I do it

I used to find that I never had enough time in a day to keep up with world news and new technology development while having to go through all the required readings for class. I found a way to address this with RSS.

You've probably seen the RSS logo on blogs and web sites, but most people don't really know what RSS is for. We did a short presentation in class about RSS and, in a class of 50+ MBA students (in a program called Management of Technology), the majority did not know what one could do with RSS.

Simply put: RSS allows you to subscribe to content on the web. Instead of visiting multiple sites to see if any new content was published (like you would visit A Frog in BC!), you subscribe to the RSS feed of a web site in a feed reader (also called aggregator). I use the Google Reader, it's free but requires a Google account (also free). Every time you access the reader, you can quickly browse through snippets of stories that were published by the various web sites you've subscribed to. If a story seems interesting, you click a link that redirects you to the source web site and can read the entire text.

I take 30 minutes at lunch to browse new content in my reader. I subscribed to feeds from the following sources:

• BBC News
• CIO.com
• David Airey - Creative design
• Eco Geek - Technology for the environment
• How to Change the World - Guy Kawasaki's blog
• Inhabitat
• Leading Blog - Leadership
• The Economist
• World Changing

On average, these sites have 2-5 new stories every day (except for BBC News and The Economist, they tend to publish a slightly larger number). If I had to chase this content around, I don't think 30 minutes would be enough.

That's how I do it. If you also use a reader to keep up to date with your favourite web site, you can also add A Frog in BC to your list of subscriptions! Just look for the web site by name.