When I first learned about RSS, I never really thought it would take off or be of any real practical use. Sure it sounded good in theory, but I kind of just tossed it off to the side thinking it would be a fad that would just fade away... I thought the same about micro-blogging too, so maybe there's a pattern emerging.

Anywho, me brother, Brent is a big fan of Google Reader, so I tried it out. Cool, I thought. And then left it to die a quick quiet death as the Internet moved on to bigger and better things...

Scroll forward a year or so, and I find myself checking a whole bunch of blogs and "planet" sites like http://planet.ubuntu.com and http://www.planet-php.net. Even though it occured to me that the planet sites are based on RSS feeds, it still didn't make me think "Ah... now I see how this can be useful....". So every morning, I'd open up about 10 tabs for ascher.ca/blog, ejohn.org, planet-php.net, planet.ubuntu.com, slashdot.org, tomshardware.com, blog.jquery.com, and checking for updates for software that I use (drupal, redmine, virtualbox, mysql-workbench), and then going through the ritual several times a day... (yes, I'm a procrastinator). I finally got fed up and thought, "There has to be a better way of doing this... what if there was some central place that can keep tabs on changes to blogs and news sites. That way I don't have to open up all these sites every time I want to see if there's something new... oh... " And so yes, I went back to that thing that I left for dead oh so long ago.

So now instead of going to a gazillion sites to waste my time, I go to one. I finish reading all the news within a couple of minutes, and then I'm done... Gee, that was quick... a little too quick... Refresh... oh look, more to read... Refresh... oh look, more to read... Refresh... oh look, more to read...