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RSS feed reader for the small business

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Gene Marks recently wrote a piece in BusinessWeek entitled, “Tech Solutions Your Small Biz Can’t Use.” Being the IT Manager of a small business (less than 200 employees) I loved his entertaining style and agreed with most of his points.

However, I take exception to his opinion on RSS feeds. Gene writes that the RSS feeds are ‘displayed in an overly large browser window that winds up distracting more than informing.’ I think the problem is the method used to display the feeds. We ran across this in our business and did a litle research.

After evaluating several RSS feed displaying mechanisms, we decided to use ‘The RSS Feeds Toolbar for Microsoft Internet Explorer‘ from Diodia sSoftware. Yes, I know I just alienated many of you FireFox users.

What we like about the product besides the fact that it is free is that it lets you restrict your feeds display to a very small single line display under the IE menu bar. You control the content of the feeds and ignore or click on them as they come up. A simple down-arrow click shows you the feeds for the past hour or two, depending on how many feeds you have.

RSS feeds are a good thing and a great invention. Computer dudes are expected to keep up with what’s happening in the industry. Scanning headlines is just one of the ways we acomplish this. RSS feeds and a great feed reader make the job easier and the free Diodia feed toolbar makes it easier for busy geeks like me.

What do you think? Have you tried the Diodia feeds toolbar and do you like it? If not, what do you recommend?

Tim is currently employed at the Burbank airport as the IT Manager of a jet management company. Prior to joining his current employer, Tim worked in a variety of management and individual contributor positions at small to mid-szie manufacturing and publishing companies. He began his career as a programmer but currenly focuses on technology mangement in the enterprise and small business. Tim is a graduate of Mt SAC - Walnut CA, earning his Associate degree in Computer Programming. He is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and maintains currency in his field through recent Server 2003 classes at Moorpark College. He specializes in supporting Microsoft Technology, especially Small Business Servers. Tim was born in Covina, CA and now resides in Camarillo, CA. He is married with 1 son. Tim is very active in his local community and spent two years in Central America. Besides reading, research and writing, in his spare time Tim enjoys Technology, Current Events and Health Research, blogging about each.

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