The end of Google Reader: a scientist’s perspective

Since 2005, I have started almost every working day by using one Web application – an application that occupies a permanent browser tab on my work and home desktop machines. That application is Google Reader. If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware that Google Reader will cease to exist from July 1 2013. Others have ranted, railed against the corporate machine and expressed their sadness. I thought I’d try to explain why, for this working scientist at least, RSS and feed readers are incredibly useful tools which I think should be valued highly. Some feeds, yesterday RSS: a primer When I first discovered the concept of RSS, it was one of those moments that made me think: “this is so brilliant, simple and obvious – why isn’t everyone using this?” In fact even today, very few of my immediate peers know what RSS is or why it’s useful. This may be an issue specific to Australian science, which is not exactly renowned for being at the cutting edge of the web revolution. However, for anyone else struggling with the concept, let’s spell it out: The point of RSS is that: you can monitor multiple, diverse sources of information in one location (aggregation) you don’t have to visit those sources until their content updates and your feed reader tells you when that happens What are these multiple, diverse sources of information? For a scientist they could include: Tables of contents from journals Alerts and search...
Source: What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate - Category: Bioinformaticians Authors: Tags: google web resources google reader rss Source Type: blogs