RSS Feeds have been around for quite some time now, but believe it or not I have only just figured out what they are all about. I must admit I never really researched into them too much, and I got the idea that it’s a way for you to view updates from certain websites.

For those of you, like me who are unsure of what RSS is all about here’s a rough idea. Modern web browsers all support RSS, and if the website is set up to provide RSS you will notice a little symbol showing this, for Safari it is in the left hand side of the address bar. If you click on this link it will open up a fairly bland looking page with all of that websites posts.

Ok so this isn’t too exciting and well if that was it’s only purpose it wouldn’t really be very significant and this is as far as I had thought to look into RSS until now. Now I haven’t had the chance to look into this on Windows because I live in a Mac filled house, but I gather it would be a similar situation for PC’s. Essentially the great thing about RSS is that it enables you to gather blog post updates and website posts all in one place – your email client or an RSS Reader.

I just love the idea of being able to open up you mail program and as your email downloads, so does all of the new posts on your favourite blogs and websites. Essentially this means that all you have to do is set up you RSS Reader to catch your site of interest and viola you will no longer need to bookmark/remember/google all of your favourite websites and spend all that time navigating around the web just to catch up on all your internet news for the day. After all isn’t computing all about making our lives easier?

Want to get your RSS feeds underway? Check out these tools:

NetNewsWire – For Mac

FeedDemon – For Windows

For mac you can also use Mail or on Windows you can use Outlook 2007. Otherwise I would try Googling RSS Reader to find one that suits you best.

This seems to be a long time coming for Three, I used the Three network for a number of years before I switched to Optus in August last year. Why did I switch, well because Three didn’t have the iPhone of course.

I have found up untill now Optus to have the best plans for the iPhone, Telstra are just plain expensive and you get hardly any included calls for what you pay, not to mention data – you have to pay extra for that. As for Vodafone well their plans are good but theres nothing in the ‘consumer’ price range it all seems to be up in the $70+ price range. This is why I went with Optus their plans seem to offer the best value for money and coverage.

I have always wanted an iphone ever since the original was released in America, and when it came to Oz in the form of the 3G I was ecstatic, we knew Optus and Vodafone were getting straight away and then came Telstra, but no not three. Three even launched a petition website to try and show Apple how much their consumers wanted the iPhone but for some reason they just couldn’t get it. At the end of the day though this caused at least myself and Melissah – two very happy Three customers to leave the network. From a marketing point of view this must have been a nightmare for them, to me I feel like we were the picture of a perfect customer to them even to the point where we were referring friends to the network because their cap plans were the best on the market.

While their plans are still great, and in the past year they have greatly expanded their 3G network to be somewhat comparable in coverage to Optus and Telstra (still charged at higher rates when you are outside 3’s own data area) I’m sorry Three but even though it’s great news that your finally getting the iPhone, its too late to get us back at least in the immediate future anyway.

It is kind of funny how Twitter works, its a great medium for communicating with friends any where in the world as well as finding new friends and it was because of Twitter that I thought I would do this follow up post to my previous one. In fact its because of Twitter that I found out about this:

Cali Lewis from Geekbrief.tv posted a tweet the other day to inform everybody about a series of blog posts she is going to do called the 12 Days of Twitter. Click on that link to take you there. I am interested to see what she posts as I have been using Twitter for some time now but I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m overly proficient in using it, Cali however is. So I thought it would be a good opportunity for all you non-believers/don’t understanders to check out her tips and see if we can learn a little more about it! Sometimes I feel a little out of the twitter loop with all the @ replies and DM’s etc so it will prove useful.

I have been a twitter user for some time now and must admit, it took me a while to understand what it was all about. I think that I have it all under control now and use it fluently. There have been stats around showing that some mad percentage of new Twitter users default and never use the service again.

My thoughts on this are that Facebook is easy to determine what you are to do, sign up find people you know, add them as friends participate in the interactive games etc. Facebook is all about interacting with people that you already know and have made some form of relationship with at another point in time.

This is where Twitter differs, it isn’t completely obvious at first what your supposed to do. It isn’t as easy to find people, and I feel that this is kind-of the point. Now yes it is a great medium for following people that you already know and keeping in touch and communicating but Twitter to me is all about finding new friends, as well as it rapidly becoming almost like a news service. Because of it’s instantaneous nature you can get news from anywhere in the world as it is happening. I also feel that to really make the most of this service you need to have access to it on the go say on your mobile phone because of it’s live and up to the second nature if you don’t then by the time you sit down at your computer of the evening then of course it’s not going to make any sense.

I read a blog post by a guy of the name Dave Moyer you can read it here: http://davemoyer.org/2009/05/23/dont-spout-nothingness-nobody-cares/ and I have to say I think that it’s a pretty accurate summary of the whole situation!

So I guess what I’m saying is, to everybody out there who has signed up for Twitter and then said to me ‘I don’t get it, it’s so lame’, well do you want a service like this, are you willing to participate in the online community that is Twitter and are you willing to give it some time to learn? If not then don’t whine at us about how you don’t get it.