In ‘06, I slowed down my writing here for web-graphics for several reasons.
**Browsers**. Much of what I was writing about had to do with CSS techniques that could be employed during a time when modern browsers were less prevalent. Constructing layouts that could match designs, render well in various browsers, and still retain semantic HTML used to be quite a bit more mind-numbingly difficult. The issues still exist of course, but thanks to community efforts (mostly via blogs) solutions for just about every CSS problem are eminently findable via your favorite search engine. So the number of times I’ve run into something that required a completely unique solution that hasn’t already been written about to death, has been greatly reduced. **Personal**. Like many people who write with regularity, lives change, patterns get altered, time and attention to devote to one’s blog can evaporate fast. **Community**. Much of what inspired me was the reading of other folks blogs. RSS made this quite efficient and effective - rather than bookmarking so many sites and re-visiting them daily, I enter their RSS links into a news reader and the news reader informs me of new un-read posts. This works up to a point - when you have over 1000 sites to keep track of, and so many of them are cross-linking and mirror-linking, what was an efficiency becomes a chore.
The chore of RSS remains a problem for me. I’m wondering if readers of this blog have any suggestions on how to keep RSS reading manageable? Feel free to discuss your favorite tool - I like the interface of NewsFire personally, but it’s not helping me feel less overwhelmed (I just opened it - 3,346 unread items). How do you keep up with your sites?
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10 Responses to “Reading RSS”
August 6th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Bloglines. Currently about 300 feeds. Too much :)
Let the amount of unread feeds grow for a few days, then speed-browse through them. With a bit of pressure (because there are so many) you will quickly skip the less relevant ones.
I also try to set apart distinct time periods for reading. For example early in the morning or early evening. That way, you have some productive time in between.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:14 am
http://www.rssowl.org/
August 6th, 2007 at 10:18 am
I would definitely recommend the following action plan:
1) Figure out which feeds you’re getting the least from
2) Delete those feeds - yes, you could possibly miss something, but its less likely
3) In contrast to Matthijs’ comment, read them every day
Time management is much like money management, if you don’t do it every day, if you don’t make it a priority, you won’t get anywhere with it. I trimmed my RSS feeds down to around 50 feeds because that is as many as I can keep track of.
limit yourself to a smaller number of posts from broader feeds.
I’m using Google Reader because I can use three keys to manage all of the UI: J [next item], k [previous item], r [refresh]. I set it to the river of news view and scan it quickly. I used to use FeedDemon, which is excellent, but since I’m running a MacBook Pro I can’t use it any more and I’m just not as excited about the desktop readers on the Mac for some reason.
August 6th, 2007 at 11:08 am
I recommend Newshutch.com
Free, web-based so it’s accessible from any computer. Adding/removing feeds is fast, with all the usual bookmarklets & keyword shortcuts.
And, the most important button: “Mark everything read” (!)
August 6th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Google Reader. I’ve got about 100 feeds. I like the integration with Firefox, also new offline read mode (via Google gears) is kinda nice feature.
August 6th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Only subscribe to the feeds that are worth reading.
I’ve never used the “Mark Everything Read” button because I always read everything I’m subscribed to.
If it isn’t important enough for me to read everything, I’ll unsubscribe.
I use Google Reader and have 86 feeds I’m currently subscribed to.
One thing I found is that I hate clicking on a post to get me to the website to see the actual content, so I decided long ago that I would not subscribe to feeds that were not full feeds.
August 6th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
I use bloglines and liberally use folders to group similar feeds together. I make folders w/ generic news aggregators lumped together (wired, linux.com, etc) and just mark them read when I get behind. I find I don’t mind missing the generic news as much as the personal one-man sites I read…
I also use the “keep new” checkbox when I’m in speed-reading mode and run across an article that requires thought or feedback… Lets me keep the total volume of unread pretty low…
August 6th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Great tips so far, thanks much. Here’s what I’ve decided to do (at least to start). I’m keeping on with Newsfire since I think my problem is not about missing features per say. But I have gone through and removed the prolific blogs… adding them instead to a folder in my browser’s bookmarks. I’d rather read through those recreationally when I have time (sites like boingboing and tastespotting). This leaves me with fewer sites updating, fewer posts to sort through, and a bit less stress. Lets see how it goes.
August 6th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Here’s what I do: application used is Google Reader, feeds (77) are loosely organized in 5 or 6 folders. Sidebar is set to show only updated feeds; the right part only shows new items and is set to List View. Then I use j and k to navigate through all new items.
If I see something interesting along the way, I open the item link or referenced page in a new background tab, while trying to get through the list as fast as possible. In the end, I go through the tabs I’ve opened, and skim, read, and/or bookmark the stuff that interests me.
August 12th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
I use bloglines and arrange the feeds in folders called ‘01 daily’, ‘02 often’ and so on (your blog is in my 03 folder :-). Every day I read the ones in the 01 folder, then progress to 02 if I have the time, then 03, and so on. If I get to a feed and I find there are 200 unread items I quickly scan the top ones then reset it. If an entry looks interesting but I have no time to read it I bookmark it with del.icio.us (I have adapted a toolbar bookmarklet for that purpose, http://gotofritz.net/coding/bookmarklets/my-delicious-bookmarklet ) and give it a to-read tag.
I am constantly updating which feed goes into which folder, depending on content and my current interests (currently my 01 folder is full of Actionscript blogs).
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