In a panel discussion at the National Health Promotion Conference this week, I talked about how public health professionals can be using new technologies to make their own lives easier. One area we focused on was RSS feeds. An informal poll of the attendees was that 10% or fewer of them subscribed to RSS feeds - more had downloaded and listened to podcasts, even fewer had ever visited or contributed to a wiki. Blog readership, BTW, was about 50%.
Not to belabor the point of why you should be subscribing to RSS feeds, here are some starting suggestions for where to find readers, some RSS feeds I use you can try out, and some alternative ways to read them.
Readers.
Get fancy or basic. I use several to see how they work and also to sort out my feeds into various 'categories' ranging from 'must reads' everyday to 'weekly news catchups' to 'new technologies.' No paid endorsements here:
Google Reader - my everyday one. Love the preview pane without having to click through to the original source.
And here are some sources for other RSS readers - TechCrunch, RSS Info, Google and Yahoo. Remember, in most cases the price is right (free) which means it's a lot easier to pick, choose and change services than it is for your cable or wireless provider.
RSS Sources
The majority of websites and blogs that offer RSS feeds usually identify that capability prominently through the use of icons or simply ‘subscribe here.’ When you click for the feed and it appears (don’t worry about what it looks like, YOU are not the reader), copy the URL and paste into your reader. Done!
Here a couple of public health-related ones to try out.
- The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Childhood Obesity News Digest and Public Health News Digest
- The Center for the Advancement of Health has two RSS feeds. You have to login (name and password) and search a bit to find them though: Health Behavior News Service and the Health Behavior News Digest.
- CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Then there are the general media Health channels – these are the feed URLS:
- AP Top Health News
CNN.com Health
New York Times Health articles
Yahoo! Health News
And don’t forget this one for your news about social marketing and social change.
If you want other ideas for using RSS feeds – Steve Rubel offers these.
New Platforms
If the idea of reading RSS headlines on your computer screen doesn’t appeal to you, try creating your own email newsletter from RSS feeds for yourself, staff, clients, family or friends at Simply Headlines [tip from Steve].
And if you’re the mobile sort, explore RSS feeds at plusmo [via Ewan MacLeod]
Now sit back and enjoy the world.
Technorati Tags: Health, Public Health, Mobile, RSS Feeds, RSS Readers
Comments