Task 4 - RSS

I was already pretty familiar with RSS. I like it particularly for sites that update on a relatively unpredictable schedule. I'm less attracted to it for sites with a lot of fresh content like say the New York Times. It's not that an RSS aggregator doesn't work pretty well as a way to skim new content on something like a newspaper, but rather that the NYT website itself is already designed to organize and display all the fresh content. It's conveniently laid out in sections, attractively organized on the page. And you know the site is updated every day, so checking it daily isn't ever going to be a waste of time.

Some of the first sites I added were various logic puzzle blogs. For example, I added Grant Fikes' blog, A Cleverly Titled Logic Puzzle Blog . He's been doing at least one "Monday Mutant" puzzle at the beginning of the week, but occasionally does a couple more. That slight irregularity and manageable frequency of updates seemed like a good candidate for RSS.

Another early pick was xkcd . There are new strips on xkcd maybe 3 times a week, and again it seemed like it fit the bill for rss. This week, there's an added bonus in a very cute joke that Math Teachers (more than anyone else) will appreciate:


I had a Calculus student who did this routinely some years back. She'd check the answer in the back of the book and then just sort of morph the problem gradually into the answer on her homework. She seemed confused when this didn't seem to help her on tests. Sigh.