Feeds and Digests, oh my!

This may be old news to some (maybe even all) of you: RSS Feeds. Anyone who is a blog addict probably knows all about them, but as I try to keep my Internet time minimal, I had only ever seen the link for an RSS feed without giving much thought as to what it actually was. Tonight I discovered the utility of this little feature as I was perusing the list of blogs provided by David on the right hand side of this page. What is RSS? It stands for Rich Site Summary - what that has to do with anything is lost on me, but I did find that an RSS feed allows one to keep track of multiple blogs in an organized manner. How does it work? Well, with the program I used - Google Reader - I just typed in the address of the blog much as if I were adding a contact on gmail and the last several posts on the blog would appear in the window. Once I scrolled past them, they were marked as having been read. I can look at all of the most rececnt posts in all of the blogs to which I have subscribed, or I can look at them one blog at a time. My description of all this may sound poorly versed in technical vocabulary, but if anyone is looking for a way to keep track of several blogs I would highly recommend RSS feeds. Google Reader is free and easy to set up, though there are several other programs out there from what I have gathered. And, if anyone is curious, I am subscribed to Booksquare and Time to Write from David's list, as well as Zen Habits. EDIT: I just found out that many online literary magazines also offer RSS feeds.

Next item: Duotrope's Digest. This website is incredibly useful. It is basically an online version of the Writer's Market, providing abstracts, pay rates, publishing dates, etc. on an awe-inspiring range of publications, both in print and electronic. The best part is that the database, which is updated daily, is searchable based on several criteria: genre, payscale, media, awards won by the publications' authors, even whether or not electronic submissions are accepted. I spent a couple of hours on it the other night, and I was able to come away with quite a list of publications I would like to look further into. I forgot to mention that are also acceptance statistics for each publication's profile, as reported by patrons of Duotrope. As can be imagined, their presence on each profile inspires mixed feelings.