Today, I’ll show you a few nifty RSS tricks that are particularly useful to motorcyclists. (This is the third and final post in the series “RSS For Motorcyclists.” Be sure to read the first two posts, What is RSS? and Feed Readers and Subscriptions if you missed them the first time around.)

Make Craigslist Work For You

I like to keep an eye out on motorcycle listings in my area on Craigslist. This helps me get an idea of the current market and what kind of prices to expect. One of the things I like about Craigslist is that it has RSS feeds for each category. All you have to do is view the category page, then subscribe to the RSS feed using the method I showed you yesterday.

Preview of a craigslist category RSS feed

While it’s kind of neat to be able to see all the latest motorcycle postings in one fell swoop, the downside is that the sheer volume of postings can be overwhelming during busy times like the spring. How about if you’re only interested in a particular bike? You’re in luck, because Craigslist also lets you subscribe to RSS feeds generated from search results!

Let’s say I wanted to know whenever an SV650 is posted for sale up in Portland. Here’s the page of search results:

Search results page on craigslist

Notice the big RSS icon in the bottom right corner? Subscribe, and you’ll always know when someone posts an ad that matches your criteria.

eBay

eBay also provides an RSS feed of search results. You’ll have to be using the original (not beta) search tool to see the RSS link, but I think it’s worth it if you want to keep an eye on new auctions as they are listed.

Preview of eBay search results RSS feed

As with Craigslist, all you have to do is search for the item you’re interested in, then subscribe to the feed from the subsequent page of search results.

Weather

Staying on top of the weather is even easier with RSS. Both Yahoo! Weather and Accuweather offer RSS feeds of the local weather forecast. I believe the National Weather Service also has local weather feeds, but as of this writing, their location search tool isn’t working so I can’t verify this. Nevertheless, the NWS offers quite a few weather-related feeds on its RSS page, including severe weather, tsunami, hurricane, and river level alerts. Forewarned is forearmed!

Accuweather local forecast RSS feed

Traffic and Road Conditions

Unfortunately, ODOT does not offer RSS feeds of its road condition and closure alerts. Maybe we Oregonians could lobby them for some change! However, the Oregon State Police incident alerts page does have an RSS feed, which is often updated much sooner than traditional media outlets. You might have to wade through the occasional roadside drug bust, but most of the posts are notifications of traffic accidents that usually involve a road closure.

Since I live in Oregon, I don’t know what other states offer in the way of road condition alerts. If you come across a good RSS feed for your state or country, please share in the comments!

Google Alerts

Last, but certainly not least, is the humble Google Alert. It may not look like much, but you can use the power of Google to your advantage by setting up alerts on topics that you’re interested in. Create an alert for “motorcycle safety”, and you’ll be notified whenever the phrase appears on a blog, web site, news article, etc. If you only care about blogs, you can tailor the alert to only search blogs. Google Alerts can be set to send their results by email or generate an RSS feed. Guess which way I prefer?

What’s Next?

This concludes my series on “RSS For Motorcyclists.” We’ve come a long way from learning what RSS is to using a feed reader to subscribe to feeds to finally exploring some feeds that are useful to motorcyclists. As always, your questions and comments are most welcome, and if you happen to stumble upon a feed that we all might find interesting, feel free to share!

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Tagged as: craigslist, ebay, feeds, howto, Motorcycling, motorcyclists, rss, tips, weather