The Tekblog

We live in a time where there is information coming at us from all angles in the form of E-Newsletters, Television Media, Websites, Radio etc, etc… With all of this information out there, where do we find the time to get anything done?

As you can probably imagine, in the ever-changing world of computer technology, there are SO many sources of information out there. One tool I use to keep all of this information in one place so that I can sanely manage it -is to use something called an aggregator. An aggregator basically compiles information from many sources and gives you one interface with which to go through said information -as opposed to visiting each source. The news / information provider “syndicates” their content through RSS or Really Simple Syndication. You have almost surely seen the RSS icon somewhere before. This icon is telling you that the information provider offers syndication of the content so that you can use an aggregator of some kind to view this information.

An aggregator can save untold amounts of time considering the amount of time you spend looking at newspapers, Magazines, watching the news or reading web articles. My aggregating service of choice is called Bloglines. Using this service I can be at any computer, anywhere and read up on the content I have chosen. I have just over 80 blogs that I monitor using this service allowing me to stay virtually plugged in to all of the information I need to keep up with. There are other aggregators that will display headline information on your cell phone, your screen saver or even your computer desktop Wallpaper.

Here are some interesting Syndication sources to get you started:

-Wavy TV10 Virginia
-Newsweek Feeds
-New York Times Feeds
-Wired Magazine
-Technical Trenches – This Blog
-Yahoo! News

Happy aggregating!

-Justin

Update 03/10/09: Check out the Lifehacker blog for an aggregator showdown…