Everyone is chattering about this the last couple of days – google is experimenting with adding RSS feeds for usenet newsgroups – actually ATOM feeds to be precise. But while everyone is chattering about it, few are explaning how to use it, including google themselves. Fortunately Nick Bradbury has posted simple to follow instructions on his blog.

This is really cool stuff. By and large the mainstream audience has missed out on usenet, in part because like IRC it’s somewhat difficult to become comfortable using it, and partly because the signal to noise ratio stinks, what with the constant spam and flame wars. Still as I tell anyone when given the opportunity, newsgroups are a fantastic resource. Perhaps google’s efforts to provide RSS feeds for them will expose them to a wider audience. Meanwhile it definitely makes it world’s easier for me to parse hundreds of groups using the ‘watches’ function of FeedDemon. This is well worth checking out if you have even a passing interest – fire up that RSS aggregator and experiment.