Thing #3 : RSS feeds

I was aware of what RSS feeds were, but had not bothered to figure out the details of how to set one up. I chose Google Reader and found it to be pretty trouble-free. I particularly like the expanded view and how, as you read the various posts within a feed, it knows which ones you've read and marks them as read without having to do anything special.

A couple disturbing things about RSS feeds:

1) This reminds me of TiVo. On TiVo, it's so easy to subscribe to things that there is always the temptation to add something you have a passing interest in to your list. Before you know it, you're signed up to read (or watch) more things than you otherwise would have and you've got all kinds of things to get through. And, not enough time in the day to do it.

2) Even more disturbing -- according to Google Reader, there are 4 people with RSS feeds to my blog. I signed up to write this blog with what I thought was the reasonable assumption that no one would be reading it. Perhaps some of you signed up for this just to test RSS feeds when you were working on Thing 3. Let's hope so. I'd hate to think anyone was actually reading this. Who are you people?

Finally, if I can figure out how to get my Google Reader account right into one of the windows on my iGoogle account, I'd really be onto to something. Haven't looked for that yet. That would give me my stuff right away on my home page (iGoogle). I'm a little concerned I won't think to login into my Google Reader account and I'll fall way behind on it.