Blogs wtf?

fini said:
I know two people have already defined RSS feeds, but I'm going to have a bash at it myself because both definitions have completely missed out why they're useful for me.

An RSS feed is the text from a blog or news site. Whenever a new post is added the RSS feed is updated. RSS reader programs, such as Google Reader, allow you to 'subscribe' to many RSS feeds. The program thus gathers all the new articles from the websites you've subscribed to whenever they're published. They're then displayed in a common format inside Google reader. It ends up like having your own fully customised newspaper.

For example instead of having to visit the following sites:

BabyBarista - Times Online - WBLG
bar council blog
Binary Law
BriefBlog
Class 46
Copyright in a Digital Age (Comm/IS 429, fall 2007)
Engadget
GeekLawyer's Blog
IMPACT®
IPKat - IP news and fun for everyone
Law News from Times Online
Little Gamers
opencontentlawyer.com
OUT-LAW News
p a b s t - p h o t o . c o m
Penny-Arcade
Pupilblog
SCRIPT-ed
Sky News | Home | First For Breaking News
Technology law
The Barrister Blog
The Magistrate's Blog
View From The Bench
xkcd.com
ZDNet UK Blogs - Rupert's Diary

I just have to visit 1 - google reader. So instead of having to remember to check 25 sites regularly to see if they've been updated - sometimes checking only to find they haven't been - I just click on google reader and 'boom' all the latest posts from those sites.
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Does it just do the new story titles or the whole article?

Seems quite good might have a look tomorrow
 
It depends on the length of the article and what site it is. Each site can decide quite how much they want to push out to people via RSS feeds. For example Rupert Goodwin's ZDNet blog just sends the first paragraph whereas the IPKat blog sends the entire article. Meanwhile pennyarcade seems to send a set amount of characters no matter how they're formatted. Each article's has a little arrow next to it anyway which, when clicked, will take you straight to the original article.
 
Inquisitor said:
There's nothing divine about 'real' journalism that sets it apart from 'weekend warrior' journalism. The only reason that 'real' journalism was the only published journalism before blogging entered the scene was that it was the only stuff worth sending to print.

Now that anyone can write stuff and have other people read it, 'real' journalism just has to earn its credibility by being better than the rest, rather than being the only journalism that's actually available for people to read.

Remember, every one has a right to free speech, and 'drawing a line', as you put it, would just be arbitrarily dividing people's views/opinions into right and wrong (or near enough)
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In the Blog sense it's the blur between reports and editorials that i'm so negative about, I'm not against free speech, far from it, just a more clear method of distinguishing the thoughts and views of Edward G Grubbage letting rip on whatever subject he chooses and Tom Chaseman, reporting on events that have unfolded three streets down from his house while he was out walking his dog.

As for RSS feeds, they have helped many a small time website pad out their content with loads of news items that they otherwise would have had to go out and find for themselves, is that a good thing or bad..I'm not so sure..

Inquisitor said:
If they want to do that, let them. People obviously didn't like it, so I doubt they'll be doing it any more :)
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Agreed in the sense of them learning their lesson, but to claim to be the bastion of 21st century new media stinks to me.
 
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Getting back to the issue of blogs rather than RSS feeds it's also worth pointing out that there's now a massive market for creating fake content for these blogs. Google loves blogs and they rank very highly for whatever keywords you stick in them.

Lots of web-developers now own whole farms of blogs that they either pay someone to keep updated with news or chuck rubbish automated stuff on them. This is because, as soon as they create a new site for someone, they write articles in each of their blogs talking about the site and suddenly it thus has tons of sites, all that do well in google, linking to it, which helps to get the new site near the top of google. This has become a really huge cottage industry.
 
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