RSS Newsreaders
Nah, this doesn't have anything to do with Klezmer or Music. Think of this as one of those "meta moments" when I talk about stuff that is about the framework--the klezmershack, itself, rather than about klezmer and Jewish music--the reasons that there is a klezmershack. I'm trying to drum up some thought and some action. Until someone else gets serious, this is the only website out there offering an RSS newsfeed that has anything to do with Jewish arts or culture (well, JewSchool is pretty fun).
But here's the incentive to start one. Download one of these nifty RSS Aggregators. You subscribe to all of the RSS feeds that you want, and you can quickly browse all of the latest headlines in seconds. (The KlezmerShack's feed URL is www.klezmershack.com/index.rdf)
So, you guys listening there at the other big Klezmer sites? RAS? KlezmerUK? You folks in Sweden and Germany? Everyone writing a Jewish blog who sometimes writes about Jewish arts and culture? Let's share stories the easy way! This sure makes webrings look as stupid as they've always been, eh?
RSS feed aggregators are a lot like the netnews readers that were useful 10 years ago back when usenet still often contained content worth following. I first got turned onto the subject when friends on Macs kept raving about this new too, NetNewsWire, that was the slickest thing under the sun. There's an interesting article about these RSS News Readers (what I call RSS Aggregators, probably incorrectly) at Dive Into Mark that was sent to me by Louis Bennett, who works here at Tufts with me (and who hasn't had the time or vanity for a personal blog or homepage, yet. Ask me sometime about the useful stuff he's written, though.)
I haven't had time to install NetNewsWire on my Mac at home, which I've been using mostly for audio and graphics (and precious little of either, given my schedule lately). Sheesh, I've just paid for MacSSH! But here's the URL: ranchero.com/netnewswire/.
There is lots of discussion about Windows RSS News Readers, but no one is as excited about anything the way they are excited about the Mac. But, that's why people who use computers for the pleasure of creating stuff use Macs--that's where the fun is. But if you use Windows as I do much of the time, what I'm working with now is something called "SharpReader." So far, it seems pretty good. The URL is: www.hutteman.com/weblog/2003/04/06.html#000056
If you are like me and enjoy creating content, and have the time to do so, the easiest way to generate RSS is to use a weblog tool, such as the one I use here on the KlezmerShack, Moveable Type. It has made providing news much more fun, it's made it easy to update this part of the site, and the RSS is just a side-effect--Moveable Type generates a couple of styles automatically.
Enjoy!