September 2010 – Page 3

Have you ever made one of those serendipitous discoveries on the web that just leaves you dumbstruck?

I’m not talking about finding some intentionally viral campaign cooked up by a marketing firm or big corporation, nor something created by people who get paid to put interesting content out there. I’m talking about something created by one person with a passion and desire to share simply because she wants to.

I made such a discovery on Saturday, when I stumbled upon a marvelously obsessive web project: Liz’s 1,001 Albums. Day by day for more than a year, Liz has been listening to and writing about each of the 1,001 albums listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. (Thanks to my Twitter pal Jason Rollins, aka @webslung, for pointing me to Liz’s blog on day 388 of her quest, in which Liz reviewed Peter Gabriel 1.)

I am in awe of this project for a number of reasons, but mainly because:

1. It involves music

2. It involves lists

3. It is obsessive

4. It is ambitious

5. It is a long-term project

I love music and lists, and I can be obsessive about some things, but when it comes to the ambitious and long-term aspects of projects, I wilt. I admire Liz’s ability to stick with this so far. (And I could benefit from applying some of Liz’s goal-setting advice to many aspects of my life.)

Liz began this project because “I know nothing about music.” Or so she claimed, way back in August 2009. That claim won’t hold up any longer, though. She’s plowed through many classics and a multitude of genres in her quest to absorb all 1,001 must-hear albums.

What I really love about Liz’s project, though, is that she is learning and exploring, and sharing her discoveries along the way. Her entries are not the prose of some music critic wannabe. She admits her lack of knowledge and approaches her subject with a joy and an innocence that music snobs (guilty!) are incapable of. It’s beautiful. Reading her entries about albums of my youth — the first Talking Heads release, say, or her latest entry, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell — reminds me of what it was like to discover new music and listen, really listen, to an album from the opening track to the end.

Liz’s 1,001 Albums is an audiophile’s version of Julie & Julia. I hope they make a movie about it, too.

Maybe you heard the recent ballyhoo about the death of the RSS reader. And maybe you heard about it via your RSS reader, as I did. Ah, the irony.

The story took one news item — the announced shutdown of one RSS reader, Bloglines — and extrapolated that news into the entire RSS universe. And so the RSS reader, the humble workhorse behind the scenes of so much shared content, became the latest web tool to fall victim to the [InsertNameOfSocialMediaToolHere] is dead meme mill. (Remind you of anything?)

But the rumors of RSS’s death are greatly exaggerated. True, the use of traditional RSS readers is down (visits to Google Reader, which I use, are down 27 percent year-over-year), but that doesn’t mean people have given up on the service altogether.

Yes, with the advent of Twitter, I rely less on Google Reader. But it still holds value for me. Here are five reasons why:

1. News from trusted connections. With the crapflood of information coming at me via Twitter, Facebook, RSS and so many other sources, I rely on a cadre of “editors” (or curators, if you prefer) who share good information with their Google Reader connections. You know how I found out about this GigaOm article countering the RSS-is-dead meme? Via two of my trusted Google Reader connections: Georgy Cohen and Joe Bonner. I also subscribe to GigaOM’s feeds but I didn’t have to wade into that stream. Georgy and Joe shared an item of interest from that stream to me. Pretty neat.

2. Searchability. If I want to find out what my RSS sources are saying about a subject, the Google search engine does the work for me. Below is a screenshot of a search for the term “RSS is dead.” Click to enlarge.

A Google Reader search for "RSS Is Dead"

3. Customization. I love the fact that I can organize my subscriptions into different categories.

Here’s a peek at my RSS feeds folders. Everything is in its right place. All feeds are neatly tucked away into the right folder. Some single feeds are tucked away into multiple folders, which is another neat feature. So, blogs about higher ed marketing or higher ed PR show up in both “higher ed” and in “marketing” or “PR.”

(Click the image at right to enlarge.)

4. Sharing bonus content. Thanks to the Google Reader widget (the “Andrew’s Shared Items” box you see in the left sidebar of this blog), I can share selected, additional content from my Google feeds with readers of this blog. That way, in addition to seeing my posts, you have the opportunity to check out some of the other things I’m reading that I think may be of value to you. While most of the shared items are relevant to the general topic of this blog, I do post occasional diversions, such as this YouTube video of a talented acoustic guitarist/singer’s cover of a great song from the new Arcade Fire album. (I know that a few of you are fellow Arcade Fire fans, so I thought perhaps you might enjoy this discovery.)

5. Music. I used to try to follow a lot of music blogs. Now whenever I want to check out what’s new in the indie music scene, I just open my “Music” folder in Google Reader to get the latest from a dozen or so respected music blogs.

So, no, RSS is not dead yet. At least not for me.

What about you?

Happy Friday, and for readers in the U.S., Happy Constitution Day.

Month: September 2010

1,001: A music odyssey (off topic)