Now that you have your PDA, put some RSS feeds on it
Quite by accident, I bought a news reader for my portable device. I wanted to purchase database software for my PDA and ended up getting a good deal on a suite of four programs, one of which was a news reader. So I decided to try it out with RSS feeds of interest to medical librarians. Here’s what I added to my news reader:
- A feed from my university’s email and web hosting system
(How nice to know when the campus help desk will be down on weekends!) - PubMed New and Noteworthy
(I think I was the first on my block to know when PubMed became available as a search engine add-on on the search bar in the upper right corner of Firefox 2.0 and IE 7.0) - NLM Technical Bulletin
(I was very excited to learn when MeSH changes for 2007 became available in the Tech Bulletin — always an interesting late-night read.) - NIH Clinical Alerts
(You never know when something important will be announced, and now I don’t have to look for them — they come to me.) - A news feed from the software company that makes my list software so I know all the bells and whistles that I can download.
(Oh look! Someone’s posted a Household Medicine Inventory List. How useful!)
Now, when I sync my device, I find out about the new “headlines” in my subscribed services.
So, where can you start? Begin at Josephine Tan’s Latitudes article on RSS feeds. Go to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/listserv/rss_podcasts.html for the URLs for NLM RSS feeds. When you are ready to add a news reader to your PDA, look for software that gives you a free trial. And don’t forget to add the Latitudes news feed! Look for the XML icon .
Editor’s Note: In case you are wondering, I’ve been using NewsBreak from Ilium Software with a Dell Axim X51v.