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Sunday, September 19, 2010

Bloglines and RSS Feeds

I just read an entry on BlogHer titled "Is RSS Dead? Bloglines to Close on October 1". I have been using Bloglines since 2005 and had two accounts.

The first account I created was to get the latest news from blogs about nonprofit technology, educational technology, and web design. For the past couple of years I had stopped checking that account because I was too busy checking my second account.

The second account was for The Nonprofit Blog Exchange. I used the public account to post the blogroll on The Nonprofit Blog Exchange blog for about 5 years.

I made the switch a few months ago to Google Reader. I had noticed that feeds were not loading correctly in Bloglines. I thought some blogs were not updated anymore. But it turned out it they were still updated, the updates loaded in Google Reader but not Bloglines. I moved The Nonprofit Blog Exchange account over to Google Reader.

After I made that switch I went into my other account and noticed Bloglines now required a word verification to sign in. I really did want to deal with that to read my rss feeds each time I logged in. I finally moved my other account over to Google Reader.

I would be lost without an rss feed reader! It helps me keep track of all the blogs that are part of the exchange. I use it to help me with writing roundups and it helps me figure out where I leave off reading each blog.

Thursday, September 02, 2010

How to Use Delicious to Find and Share Disaster Relief Resources

In September 2005 I wrote an entry titled How to Tag Hurricane Katrina Bookmarks on del.icio.us.

Recently there have been more disasters and it is time to revisit this topic.

What is delicious?

Delicious is a great tool to share bookmarks with others. When you add a bookmark, you can add tags that are related to the link.

You can find shared bookmarks by using tags or by using the search engine.

What resources can you find and share on delicious?
  • News articles about specific disasters
  • What organizations are helping and how they are helping
  • Information about volunteering
  • Information about donating

Disaster Relief Related Tags

disaster AND relief
http://www.delicious.com/tag/disaster+relief

hurricane
http://www.delicious.com/tag/hurricane

earthquake
http://www.delicious.com/tag/earthquake

flood
http://www.delicious.com/tag/flood

oilspill
http://www.delicious.com/tag/oilspill


For specific disasters, you can use the following format:

http://www.delicious.com/tag/TYPEOFDISASTER+PLACE

Earthquake AND Haiti
http://www.delicious.com/tag/earthquake+haiti

Earthquake AND Chile
http://www.delicious.com/tag/earthquake+chile

Flood AND Pakistan
http://www.delicious.com/tag/flood+pakistan

Hurricane AND New Orleans
http://www.delicious.com/tag/hurricane+neworleans

Oil Spill AND Gulf Coast
http://www.delicious.com/tag/oilspill+gulfcoast

For hurricanes (or tropical storms) you can use the following formats-

http://www.delicious.com/tag/hurricane+NAME
http://www.delicious.com/tag/hurricaneNAME
http://www.delicious.com/tag/NAMEOFHURRICANE

Hurricane AND Katrina
http://www.delicious.com/tag/hurricane+katrina