week 4, thing #9 (MERLIN and other feeds)

I visited MERLIN, I found the calendar of statewide trainings and the learning links useful. Overall, there wasn't that much content on the site. I visited Feedster and created a widget. I don't know how useful this site really is, since search results usually included a lot of irrelevant content not really related to the search terms. I found Syndix8.com difficult to navigate. Of all the suggested sites, I really liked Topix.net. It linked you to a variety of news sources from the town of your choice. I thought it was better than the local news feature on Yahoo news. And lastly, Technorati. On this site, I liked that you could make a watch list for subject matter, I guess this is similar to Feedster's widget though. I would have to say that Bloglines.com was by far may favorite site for RSS feeds. It is easy to navigate, the site is organized and clean. And all of the feeds are together and easy to access. But it is not without its flaws. When I originally selected my RSS feeds, I thought that I would be able to go to one source for all of my news and blogs, but I have found that not all RSS feeds are updated on a regular basis. Feeds for Yahoo News and some sections of the NYT (like book reviews) didn't update regularly, so I have returned to visiting those websites.