Really Simply Said: RSS Explained Simply

kpotis — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:28:45 +0000

The lazy man’s way to surf.

Last December, my wife and I spent Christmas in Florida. I remember sitting by the pool, comfortable and relaxed, reading a new book. We decided to get a couple drinks and I had two choices–get up and order the drinks from the bar across the pool complex or order them poolside. I took the poolside option. It didn’t cost me any more and the drinks came to me.

RSS is to news, what poolside services is to a vacation. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, but that’s not really important. What matters is all your favorite web news and updates come to you. I have feeds from AIGA, DMI, Wired, LifeHacker, AppleInsider and 70 more websites. It’s incredibly easy to use and a huge time saver.

I really liked this simple, low-tech 3-minute video. Combine whiteboard, erasable marker and cut paper icons and you get a simple description of RSS.

Simply put, you subscribe to a web site via their RSS feed. That feed goes to your reader (I use Google Reader). Your RSS reader checks your subscribed feeds regularly for new content and downloads any updates that it finds to your reader. That’s it. You then peruse your reader and read in the stories our interested in.

I moved all my favorite sites over to RRS feeds last year and I would never go back to the “old way”. My kids’ schools even provide an RSS feed for updates on events and schedule changes.

Enjoy the short video and let your sites come to you, poolside.

Source: I’ve become a genuine fan of Craig Swanson’s CreativeTechs Tips site.

Book pre-report: In-House Design in Practice

kpotis — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:09:30 +0000

I purchased In-House Design In Practice: Real-World Solutions for Graphic Designers by Cathy Fishel. It’s exciting to see more interest and design outlets for inhouse work. AIGA and DMI both have inhouse-specific content on their sites now. And of course GD USA and HOW magazines have done a fantastic job of casting some light on the inhouse design department caves with their American Inhouse Design Awards, In-HOWse Designer Conference and In-HOWse Design Awards issue.

Here’s what I found on Cathy.

Cathy Fishel has written and edited for graphic designers, ad agencies and allied organizations for more than 20 years. Former editor of Step magazine and Dynamic Graphics magazine, she is a contributing editor for PRINT magazine and is editor of LogoLounge.com.

In-House Design in Practice presents case studies of Tim Hale from Fossil, Michael Lejeune of Metro (The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority), Nickelodeon, Virgin Atlantic, Whirlpool and 15 or 20 others.

I’ve only read the first few pages but I’m really interested in digging deeper into this book. I’ll report back in a future posting.

Anyone else read the book? (leave a comment or email me)

The Inhouse Creative » aiga

Really Simply Said: RSS Explained Simply

Book pre-report: In-House Design in Practice