Thoughts on FilterMyRSS Service
| March 29th, 2008Bloggers and freelance writers have a problem that no other set of writers has ever had to face.
Too much information.
If you’re like me, your RSS feed reader is almost embarrassing. Whenever I see a great blog or website, I subscribe to its feed, whether it be for research purposes, to get ideas for articles or just for fun.
Well, if you find yourself spending more time going through your feed reader looking for information and ideas than you spend actually implementing them, there’s a better way to do it…FilterMyRSS.
This is an incredibly simple idea that does only one thing, but does it well…it allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds in such a way as to only receive feed updates that relate to your chosen keywords. The best way to understand it is to use it, so it’s example time!
The RSS feed address for HomeBizBlogger is http://feeds.feedburner.com/HomeBizBlogger. I already knew that, but if you don’t know the feed address of a blog or website, finding out is as simple as clicking on the RSS button…the address it takes you to is the feed address.
Let’s say I love HomeBizBlogger, and really find some great information there…information I would like to share with my readers. However, I write about blogs, and those are the only posts I’m interested in. FilterMyRSS will give me a feed subscription URL that only gives me the bloggeries that relate to blogging.
For comparison, here’s the usual feed link again for HomeBizBlogger: Regular feed
Now, here’s the feed link that FilterMyRSS gives for HomeBizBlogger, filtering out everything that doesn’t have “blog” or “blogging” in it’s title, categories or description: Filtered feed
The feed for HBB was whittled down to five entries. Now, of course this application isn’t perfect, nor is it expected to be (they have “beta” right on the logo), but it has the potential to allow you to spend less time searching for ideas, and more time using them.
