There is a two part awesomeness to this. One, a bunch of people have RSS cloud enabled feeds without having to lift a finger. And two, tons of developers instantly have RSS cloud enabled feeds available to them for testing. I fit in both categories.

The only unfortunate thing, which I’m guessing won’t be the case for long, is that you have to be followed by Dave in order to appear in that list.

Fortunately, there’s already an answer for that too if you’re willing to try a little beta software. My Status Cloud is an RSS Cloud aggregator, RSS Cloud client, AND Twitter client. Anything you post to the cloud or Twitter through mystatuscloud.com is immediately available in a cloud enabled feed as well. Mine is here.

And, if you want to publish the feed somewhere else, you can do that to! If you want to know more, see my earlier post on the available features.

To the Unemployed – - A number of steady men can find employment by vending this paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those who buy to sell again.

For at least a thousand years, people have been able to receive news through some kind of bulletin or newspaper format. In a printed format.

RSS is a web feed format used by publishers on the internet to make their material available to others somewhat like the print on paper. In an electronic format.

Twitter is a web application that allows users to publish material in a proprietary format using the service as a delivery method.

Google Reader is a web application that delivers material that has been published in the RSS format to users. It uses it’s own delivery method in which it checks with the publisher every so often to see if new content is available.

Now I will switch from definitions to analogies, because analogies help me understand things.

If I visit RSS formatted feeds manually using my browser as the delivery method– I go on a walk through town whenever I have time,  and visit all of the newspaper press buildings to see new content has been printed since I was last there. This takes a while because I need to travel to New York for the Times, DC for the Post, Chicago for the Tribune, etc…

If I use Google Reader (or another aggregator) as the delivery method for my RSS formatted news– I go on a walk every once and a while to my favorite news stand to see if they have any changes in content available from the newspapers I like.

If I use Twitter as the delivery method and format for my news– I go on a walk to the building in San Francisco which Twitter uses to publish content as it happens. This is great because it’s available as soon as somebody submits it. Every once and a while, I even choose a building in another city to look at content delivered by Twitter. These buildings have agreements to be notified of any news coming out of Twitter headquarters as soon as it happens. There are some other buildings that don’t have agreements, but they still check with Twitter headquarters every once and a while, and I can check new material from them when I go to the newspaper stand.

If I’m using rssCloud as the delivery method for my news that is in the RSS format– I stop going for walks. Instead, I have finally decided to sign up for delivery with all of the newspapers that I love to read. I am only required to open my door and read what’s sitting on my porch. I even have access to content that comes from Twitter, because one of the newspapers that I love to read has an agreement to be told of any news from the Twitter system.

Both delivery and format have been around for a while, nobody’s going anywhere. Thanks, Barney Flaherty.

My first inclination was to keep driving. Don’t look back, just keep going until the car runs out of gas. Could I do that though? Was I ready?

“Screw it.”

Pushing my foot to the floorboard, I swung around the first right I saw. I didn’t know what road I just turned on, but I knew that it was the right one. All of a sudden, images of what I was supposed to do at work the next day started floating through my head, the voices of my family and friends asking where I went started filling my ears. I reached over and turned up the volume on the radio:

“My hands are turning numb, but I still gotta strum, my velvet guitar…..”

As the music filled the air, everything else quickly faded. The only image was that of the yellow lines buzzing by the tires and the trees reaching out from the darkness on the side of the road. The only sound was sweet music mixed with the rushing cool night air.

This was life.

But where was I headed? So much space to drive into, but where was my final destination. I hadn’t thought that far yet, and I didn’t want to. The best option for me would be to drive first and figure things out later. Silently, I started to wonder if my friend was in the same boat or if he had just gone home like normal and fallen asleep. Well, either way, I was on a mission that was not going to be stopped. A mission for change.

After driving for about an hour, I realized that I hadn’t even really payed attention to what road I was on or what direction I was going. It all happened so fast that I didn’t care about anything when I started. Keeping my eyes open for passing signs, I started to slow down a little bit and try to grab my surroundings. Where were all the signs, there should be something out here telling me where I was. Looking around, I noticed to myself that I hadn’t seen any headlights on this road at all since the one car I passed when first turning onto it.

“I must be in the middle of nowhere if there’s this little to go by”, I thought to myself.

Oh well, keep on driving, that’s the plan.

Suddenly, the sun started to rise quickly. The night went from darkness to daytime in an instant. My mind started racing, what the hell was going on? I looked down at the clock, the minutes were cruising by faster than the trees. I shook my head, confused as hell. Where was I and why was this happening to me? As quickly as I was confused, the realization came to me.

“Oh Shit!”

My eyes slammed open in time to be blinded by the headlights of an oncoming semi, horn blaring, swerving into the opposite lane at the last minute. My car fishtailed into the ditch on the wrong side of the road as I slammed on the brakes. Finally, it slid to a stop, the back end against the grass, headlights shining into the air. I rubbed my hands across my face and started laughing.

Nervous laughter has that habit of making you think you’ve just been cured of stupidity.

I shifted into park and started to relax.

If there ever was a time to be lucky, that was it. How could I have fallen asleep at the wheel like that? I’ve driven home hundreds of times even more tired than I am right now. How long was I asleep, that moment seemed like it was lasting forever.

I slumped down in my seat, totally confused, totally exhausted after that adventure.

“There’s a story inside your eyes that needs a witness…..”

The music continued to play as my eyes drifted slowly back to sleep, an image of the sun rising and setting continuously in my head.