CDC has done an awesome job explaining the concept of RSS while sharing cutting edge information on health. This is a post that shares the link to the RSS feeds for Women and Kids health. But included is one of the very best explanations of RSS feeds I have ever read.
Check out this post and subscribe to the health feeds! You Go CDC!
PS note that there are also some cool podcasts on the site.
Ok, I admit that sounds like a question I ask folks when I am doing blog training. But it is a critical question. Many of us are not tapping into this powerful, I mean powerful resource.
As defined by Wikipedia:
The Google Alerts is a content monitoring service, offered by the search engine company Google, that automatically notifies users when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by the user and stored by the Google Alerts service. Notifications can be sent by email, as a web feed or displayed on the users iGoogle page.
Google Alerts only provides content from Google’s own search engine.
Currently there are six types of alerts sent when new content matches the search terms of the alert:
* Comprehensive – (default setting) aggregates News, Web and Blogs
* News – sent when matching content makes it into the top ten results of a Google News search
* Web – sent when new web pages appear in the top twenty results for a Google Web search
* Blogs – sent when matching content appears in the top ten results of a Google Blog Search
* Video – sent when matching content appears in the top ten results of a Google video search
* Groups – sent when matching content appears in the top fifty results of a Google Groups search
Users determine the frequency of checks for new results. Three options are available: “once a day”, “once a week”, or “as it happens”. These options set the maximum frequency of alerts and do not necessarily control how often they will receive alerts. Alerts are sent only if new content matches the user-selected search terms.
The first option, for example, means they will receive at most one alert email per day. The “as it happens” option can result in many alert emails per day, depending on the search.
Google Alerts are available in plain text as well as HTML. In October 2008 Google also made alerts available as RSS feeds.
Try doing a comprehensive notice everyday for a week. You can always edit it. Then blog every day and include the title of each blog post in your alerts.
Glean from some of the news listings and other blogs and add them to site as a blog post. Remember to provide all links included in that blog post and credit to the authors
Are you up for the challenge?
Please share some of your results.
PS Use an email address that can tolerate the traffic.
If you have a WordPress.com site your url will read http://www.mysitename.wordpress.com. Now, if you want to create a url to put on a business card that is just tooooo long for someone to key into the browser. So you can upgrade your FREE WordPress.com site by just going to the UPGRADE tab.
There you will have several upgrade options if you pay for them. The one I am referring to is 14.97 if you host your domain with WordPress.com and 9.97 if you use a domain name you already have.
To illustrate this feature I just upgraded a site I have in WordPress.com called Rosies Blog Class. Now, the url is http://www.rosiesblogclass.wordpress.com. I purchased a domain from WordPress.com which is http://www.rosiesblogclass.com.
So, if I am teaching a workshop or speaking to someone about blogging I can send them to http://www.rosiesblogclass.com and it will redirect to the site.
So, if you have a site on WordPress.com that you want to send folks to when you are not online, consider this handy upgrade.
PS Remember if you are hosting with WordPress.com and not self-hosting with a WordPress.org blog platform YOU MUST MANUALLY BACKUP YOUR SITE. Do not expect WordPress.com to do it for you. I strongly suggest that you maintain a folder on your hard drive with everything you post on your site.
If anyone has other solutions let me know.