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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Living in XML?

Danny O’Brien, among others, has been noting how many nerds have started piping as much of their life as possible through personal XML feeds, using stuff like RSS and Atom.

I’m intrigued by this, but, apart from the 100 sites I read each day in NetNewsWire, I’m only dipping a toe into the world of personal RSS. I get a feed of shows my friends are attending and Netflix recommendations, but not too much more. I know there's a lot more out there.

One thing I’ve really started to love is reading comments and updates via RSS and Atom (instead of email). I think Flickr is way ahead of the curve on this one: I can get feeds of practically anything, including recent comments on my photos, recent photos by my contacts or even photos by keyword. I’d love to see the folks at LiveJournal look at something similar. It’s a brilliant way to consolidate and “bubble up” information that used to require a lot of drill-down in scattered locations. It seems like the way things are heading, to be sure.

Anyway, I’d love to hear how you are using XML feeds in ways that you find productive and cool; How have you piped your life? Not so much the typical use of feeds for blogs and news—we all know about that. But how about personal calendars, reminders, work notes, and the rest of the administrivia in your life? Was it hard to setup? Anybody keeping a private blog? Let's hear about it.

Layman’s terms and links gratefully accepted, as ever. (Also: aching for the next round of that Atom vs. RSS [.91|1|2] breakdance fight? Take it outside, Boogaloo Shrimp. We're keeping it friendly on this street. TIA.)

nick's picture

i've been toying with a...

i've been toying with a simple blogger blog to update myself with reminders. typically I find or think of a number of things during the day (at the office) that I want to remember to read/do/check out later at home.
until recently i'd been emailing links, notes, etc to myself to read when I get home. But i don't want to clutter up my gmail account with extra nonsense to myself (although gmail handles stuff like this pretty brilliantly if I decided to do it this way). so now I email post to my private blogger reminders blog and have the feed in my firefox Live Bookmarks now(sage rss reader pre-ff1.0pr). so it just gets checked with the rest of my feeds when i get home and have the time. works well. I'm sure there's a simpler/more streamlined approach. but for now it works and it's a fun use of tech...

 
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