Improve Your Infobank Savings (General Knowledge) With RSS Feeds

By Raj | Nov 28, 2008

At once you’re on this blog, you would have noticed that there are two subscription options available everywhere, one of email and the other of RSS, for subscribing to new posts of this blog. Furthermore, you would have seen the subscription boxes at the end of each post to grab the attention of anybody who finishes reading a post. The outcome after placing these offerings was marvelous with a notable increase in the subscriber base. While placing these subscription options, I was of the predetermined notion that RSS would be the preferred choice of subscription of any reader, the reason being that RSS awareness is catching up and that anybody would be reluctant to disclose the email ID being afraid of spam. But do you know what the outcome was? I was totally wrong! It was the other way round! The majority of the subscribers were willing to subscribe through email rather than the RSS option!

FeedBurner Reader Break Up

If you look at the pie chart for the breakup of the subscriber base of this blog, almost 70% of the readers are hooked on to the conventional method of exchanging/acquiring information – email. So what it shows? It shows that medical transcriptionists, the majority of the subscribers of this blog, are still ignorant about RSS, and email still remains the preferred source of receiving communication/sharing information among medical transcriptionists even though technology has advanced further beyond(like bookmarking sites, RSS etc.).

Similarly, you might have noticed the social bookmarking button “Share/Bookmark This” at the end of each post. If you look at the pie chart (see below) of its usage, 86% of the users are still relying on email to share the information that they have found on this blog with their friends, and I think the remaining 14% would too have been used by some techies to share the articles under the category blogosphere or computer/internet of this blog in bookmarking sites.

Now while looking at the comments statistics of this blog (see below for the chart), two spam watchdogs are in action, and together they have already trapped around 2,50,000 spam comments from automated spam bots, but comments from human beings are rare on the comments section, and I get all the feedbacks of my posts in my email inbox, either through the contact page or by replying to the email feed. I invite the readers of this blog to come forward and actively share your views in the comments section of this blog. Even if it is a negative view, feel free to share your thoughts. If you look at the comments policy of this blog, I only discourage such types of comments that tarnish others or spread hate or if the comments are advertisement calls not pertaining to the subject discussed.

Spam Trapped by Spam Watchdogs

With all these data, we could conclude that though medical transcriptionists are on the internet most of the time other than while they are typing, browsing all sorts of sites and search engines tracking those drugs and words, they are still unaware of and/or reluctant to adapt themselves to the changing scenarios with new technologies outdating the old ones. I have about hundreds of feeds of different sites and blogs on my feed reader. Had I been subscribing to email updates instead of RSS, my inbox would get clogged daily with updates of all those sites. If I’m enjoying the benefits of RSS, why shouldn’t I pass the information to my fellow surfers too, after all I’m not going to lose anything? That’s why I came up with the earlier post to throw some light on RSS feeds and to alleviate your ignorance, doubts, fears and worries about RSS. (It was the post that I received the most number of thanksgiving mails. I’m happy I could be of help to a couple of MTs)

Every year, May 1st is being observed as RSS Awareness Day and hope by the next RSS Awareness Day you’re leaping ahead as an information junkie with hundreds of feeds in your reader gathering all the news from the internet!

Update your information by subscribing to the feed of whatever site that interests you, there is a lot of things happening around you, don’t seclude and limit yourself accessing information and improving your infobank savings. There are a lot of blogs out there, perform a Google blog search to find a couple of blogs that inspires you, subscribe to them. There are tons of news sites out there, try Google news search to find news sites of your choice, subscribe to them. Actively participate in medical transcription forums like MT Stars and clear your doubts as well as clear others’ doubts because you learn about a subject more when you teach than when you learn yourself, leave your comments at medical transcription articles. Keep updating your (general) knowledge. Knowledge is power, acquire knowledge and convert it to power. With power and knowledge, earn money to lead a better life!