Spring Widgets: RSS made easy

A week or so ago, I was looking at my webpage. It was the most basic, boring string of code on the internet. I am an instructional designer by trade, so one might think I would have a really cool website. But then again, most mechanics out there drive jalopies – always time to work on someone else’s, never time for your own.

I decided it was high time to simplify my life. I often found myself exhausted from typing in individual URL’s for the USDLA, CNN, Global MBA Blog, EduGeek Journal, and all of the other sites I check regularly. All of this work, just to find nothing had been updated since I last checked (of course this is rarely the case with EduGeek Journal). Enter SpringWidgets http://www.springwidgets.com/ . This is an RSS Aggregator that can be downloaded to your desktop, used in a website, on MySpace, and many other places. The interface is simple, appealing, and functional. I currently have 10 feeds on my personal website: http://darrencrone.com/rssfeeds.htm From an educational perspective, students can easily keep up to date with multiple research journals, newspapers, or anything else with the magical letters RSS stamped on it, by simply glancing at their course homepage.

2 thoughts on “Spring Widgets: RSS made easy

  1. Nice idea. People have been speculating on how web applications will start making the jump to desktop soon. And it has been happening – to some degree. I think Google announcing that Google Docs will make that jump will help create a rush to make that happen more. Now, how to get EduGeek Journal to jump from web to desktop….

    Do you know what kind of technology this is built on (for the desktop version)? In K-12 education, the prevalence of, um, dying machines might makes this hard to use. But – it would be nice to have this already set up on the computers in your room (or school lab), and then have students do a current event activity every day when they come in to class. Online classes could do this a lot easier, of course.

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