Using RSS for Research

There is an awful lot of information out there. And that's just on Wikipedia. Taken as a whole, the Internet is a vast field of data and unfiltered information that offers nearly unlimited potential for research. Whether you are a professor or a student, you will do research on the Internet. This can be a daunting task, as unlike with the old, book and print journal-based world of research, information on the Internet tends to drift and change over time.*

So, how to keep track of it all?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is one way. You may have noticed these shiny orange icons on pages all over the Internet. Blogs, journals and newspapers uses them to let subscribers keep track of articles of interest. By saving the RSS link, you can stay informed of changes to websites of note. Your browser feeds the latest changes to your RSS folders and you can keep track of the sites you visit most without even having to go to the site.

But this is just one way to use RSS. Another is to syndicate your own research, so that collaborators can stay on top of the current project. By using an RSS enabled blog, you can post changes, discussion topics and updates, allowing your collaborators to keep up with the research process.

You can also create search feeds, like Google Alerts that will email you whenever your selected search term is mentioned online. This may end up dumping ridiculous amounts of useless links into your in box, so use a refined search term for your alert, not just one or two words.

But what happens if you are on the move and still need to do research? Say you're at a public computer – one which obviously doesn't have your RSS feeds bookmarked – what then?

Blinklist enables you to save your bookmarks to a website, making them accessible form anywhere. You only have to remember one url to gain access to the sites you need and you can organize them with tags and ratings to suit your interests. This lets you take yur research with you.

There is also Zotero, a plugin† designed to help manage your research, export citations and keep track of articles and journals. Zotero has the benefit of working with databases as well, allowing you to track, annotate and organize articles behind proprietary firewalls. You can even export citations.

Zotero v. 1.5 is in beta testing. This version has the added benefit of allowing you to back up your data and sync it across multiple computers.

So, don't be afraid of doing research online. We have the technology to keep track of that one pivotal article you need. Link it, syndicate it and move on to the next stage in the research process: writing that paper!


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* Obviously, it does in journals and books as well, but the pace of change on the internet is staggering. It may take years for a book to be updated and journals publish monthly corrections but these days, your research may change daily or even hourly, depending on your field.

† Firefox 2.0.* or 3.0, Netscape Navigator 9.0, or Flock 0.9.1 for Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Synchronicity

So, you have a G-Mail account, Outlook Calendar, Zoho writer account and about a hundred other web sites and applications spread across the entire Internet.

And you ask yourself, "Is there a way to get all this web 2.0 stuff to work together?"

The answer is: Yes!

1. How to Sync Calendars

We all have calendars, or else we wouldn't know where to be and when. The problem is accessing that calendar in a way that makes it convenient and easy for others to find you as well. This problem is only compounded by the fact that there are several types of calendar programs out there and they don't always play nice. Maybe you use iCal on your Mac at home but Outlook at work. You've tried to migrate to Google Calendar, but that means you just have a third way to confuse people and yourself.

There is a way to not only share your calendars but get them all to agree and auto update. Mostly. While there are instructions for manually syncing your iCal Calendar to Google calendar, you can't as of yet, get iCal and Outlook to play nice. Nor is it possible to have all your calendars allow for updates across platform. Google Calendar works best for this need, as you can access it from the web. However, if you need to share your Google calendar with coworkers who only use Outlook, this can be a challenge. But not an insurmountable one.

Google Calendar Sync is an application developed by Google Labs to allow you to sync your Google Calendar with Outlook:

Today, we're pleased to announce a tool to sync Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook calendar. If you add an event in your Microsoft Outlook calendar, it will automatically sync to Google Calendar and be accessible at any time, whether you're using a browser or a mobile phone. Similarly, if you schedule an event with a future pop-up reminder in Google Calendar, you will automatically see that reminder in your Microsoft Outlook calendar on your computer. Your Microsoft Outlook calendar and Google Calendar are automatically kept up to date, leaving you free to use whichever one you want.

Another option for syncing not just calendars but also websites and links is Plaxo. This is a site that acts as a hub for your websites and web 2.0 applications, such as social networking and file sharing sites. There is a free version that supports basic cross-platform syncing, though the more advanced features require you to buy a subscription ($49.95/year).

2. How to Sync Web Sites and Web-based Applications

There's no real way to sync everything. But a lot of things work together in ways that make it surprisingly easy to navigate between your desktop and the web.

Blinklist let's you bookmark all the sites you want to keep track of and access them from any computer, as they are saved on the web on your Blinklist page.

You can rank the sites, add notes and use social networking tags to organize websites according to your needs and tastes. Have something personal you don't want the world to see? Make it private. Want to share a link with a friend? There's a quick and easy way to send it via EMail.

Zoho and Google Docs allow you to upload, share and collaborate on word documents, spreadsheets and

presentations in a way that allows you to track changes and drafts.

And of course there is Google Sites, which allow you to build your own little corner of the web, customized to keep track of all your other sites, applications and accounts.