Making Alan Greenspan Proud

You've got to pay attention or you might miss out on lots of fun new technical doo-hickies. Lately, I've only needed to check out The Ivy Bush to find out about the latest fancy appendage for my blog.

Take, for example, the "Site Feed" hyperlink that has recently appeared over at The Ivy Bush. (It's in the upper right hand corner of the main page.) I'd seen similar links at other blogs but didn't really give them much thought. But when The Ivy Bush decided to syndicate, I took notice. Once again, Marvin proves himself to be ahead of the curve since The Ivy Bush Site Feed predates a slew of stories this weekend about RSS.

RSS, proclaim the people who know, is "The Next Big Thing." So I did a little investigating. Basically, RSS is a data format that allows a program called an "aggregator" to retrieve information from any source that "publishes" or "syndicates" its content. The idea is that instead of you having to surf over to a site to get the content, your "aggregator" can automatically refresh itself every time one of your favorite sites updates its content. The new information is at your fingertips with very little work on your part. The folks at The Campaign Desk have perhaps the most succinct explanation of RSS and how it works.

Armed with a better understanding of RSS, I investigated a variety of aggregators. For the time being I've settled on Pluck. It's simple to use, it works with my Internet Explorer browser, and it's free.

So far, so good. With RSS and my new aggregator I'm confident I'll now be able to waste time on the Internet much more efficiently.

And now you can join me in efficient time wasting. Apeiron, in a desperate attempt to keep up with the technology leading Ivy Bush, is now syndicated too. Just look for the "RSS Feed" link underneath the Archives section on the right side of the page.