RSS Feeds

The most important tool in this project was RSS Feeds. I used Google Reader to keep track of them. I check my Google Reader several times a day. It saves me a ton of time because I don't have to go individually to the sites that I care about.

Some feeds are a matter of trial and error. Not all content provided will be good. Others are wonderful. But if you come across some not so great feeds, don't worry, you can use tools like Feed Rinse, Yahoo! Pipes to make them better.

Below, I discuss some of my feeds. Some you may recognize as websites that I discussed, especially the news portion.

This is not a comprehensive list

Blogs

Name: Pure Coffee Blog
Access: http://purecoffee.blogspot.com/
Frequency: Regular, updated about twice a month
Information: This blog reviews coffee shops. It is a good reminder that besides the giants out there like Starbucks, there are still local coffee shops. I enjoy reading the blog and then comparing/contrasting to what I know about the corporate giants. This site is credible in that the blogger has no financial obligation to say that anyone's better than the other. Without having tried all these places, my only chance at understanding all the other coffee shops is to live through her taste buds and eyes.
Query: Found through a Google search for [Coffee Blog]
Evaluation: 6/10

Name: JavaJeb
Access: http://javajeb.wordpress.com/
Frequency: Regular, updated about twice a month
Information: This is an example of a "bad blog" for research. I was subscribed to it and then took it off my list. However, to get the posts he did have about coffee, I used a page monitoring feature to look at the coffee tag page.
Query: Found through a Google search for [Coffee Blog]
Evaluation: 1/10; Despite mentions of coffee here and there, only a few posts were about coffee. Even after narrowing this down by tag, still could not avoid random posts with just the word coffee in it that didn't focus on the topic.

Name: Daily Shot of Coffee
Access: http://dailyshotofcoffee.com/
Frequency: Regular
Information: Daily Shot Of Coffee is your source for everything coffee: coffee reviews, coffee shop reviews and much more. It’s written by the average joe for the coffee lover in us all. I find the tag feature very helpful on any blog. On this particular one for instance, I can easily consolidate all the McDonalds Coffee posts. It also has a site categories location where I can narrow down just coffee news for instance.
Query: I search for the usual on this site [Starbucks] [Folgers] etc. The above features usually means I do not have to extensive searches, I can just click through the site.
Evaluation: 8/10; It has great information and also does a good job at linking to other blogs and sites.

Google News Feeds

Name: Google News > ["US Coffee"] Search
Access: http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22US+Coffee%22
Frequency: Daily
Information: News about coffee in the US
Query: ["US Coffee"] I found queries pretty hard to structure due to the fact that the word "coffee" has a tendency to pop up everywhere but "coffee industry" is unlikely to pop up in every article about coffee. This added to the fact that I want to maintain it as an US industry analysis prompted me to use "US Coffee". As you go along with your research however, I would recommend using specific queries such as [Starbucks] or other detailed company names.
Evaluation: 8/10; It could always provide me with a lot of news. But not all news content were relevant.

Name: Google News Feeds > [Starbucks]
Access: http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=starbucks
Frequency: Daily
Information: News stories containing Starbucks
Query: [Starbucks]
Evaluation: 8/10; Provided me with many feeds. They are usually relevant, but sometimes in the context of articles analyzing company stocks vs just updates about the company.

News Sites for Coffee Industry Research

Name: BusinessWeek > Starbucks
Access: http://bx.businessweek.com/starbucks/news/
Frequency: Daily
Information: BusinessWeek is a good source of news articles, especially given this handy Starbucks tag that allows it to only show Starbucks news. However, the tag feature does not exist for all topics. For instance, I could not find one for McCafe.I can read news from compiled sources like New York Times, BusinessWeek, Motley Fool just to name a few. In addition, it also shows me mentions in blogs.
Query: [Starbucks] Although in the overall BusinessWeek site, I have also searched for [Coffee Chains] [Coffee] [McDonald Coffee] [Peed] etc.
Evaluation: 9/10 Very informative website although I wish the tag feature extended to more companies and topics.

Name: New York Times > Coffee; New York Times > Starbucks Corporation
Access: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/coffee/index.html
Frequency: Daily
Information: Has a very nice layout for the Coffee topic with pictures, topic blog, highlights from archives, articles about coffee, even multimedia sources.
Query: At NYT, I also searched for [Starbucks] and found their page for Starbucks Corporation which was very useful with their stock performance and peer performances and of course news, articles, and even the company's press release.
Evaluation: 10/10; I love the layout. It only includes NYT articles so it doesn't branch out as much as Businessweek above in terms of news, however, it has an abundance of blogs and other information. But its own information is great and for company pages, it easiest shows you how the company is doing and why.

Name: BNET > Industries > Food Industry
Access: http://industry.bnet.com/food
Frequency: Daily
Information: BNET is a deep web search engine that gathers a lot of wonderful articles that are more opinion based than just fact based. For instance, I can read articles from CNN, MSNBC, WSJ about McCafe, but BNET would give me analysis of McCafe vs Starbucks battle.
Query: My favorite ones are just ones about specific coffee companies. E.G. [Starbucks]. I can also just look at its tag. Here are some other companies I discuss in this wiki that I can read about on BNET

Evaluation: 10/10 This is a great source of commentary about news.

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