When I bring up Bloglines I find myself dreading the boldfaced numbers that await me on the left hand pane. There's so much there, so much I don't have time to read.
It's pruning time on my subscription list:My chopping list for today:
BoingBoing - A constantly updating feed of silly items I never read. This went down the same path Engadget did for me a few months ago. Too much information , not enough time to read.
TechCrunch - I finally realize that I'm almost 100% not interested in Web 2.0 startups. It seems like a steady stream of pretty logo's, missing vowels and well written text that just bores me.
Crash.net F1 News - I barely get the chance to catch any races on TV nevermind read 200 items about it. It's also got RSS ads for online gambling up the Wazoo on every post. It's like spam that I've invited in myself.
52Projects - I'm scanning the last 50 posts trying to figure out if I've ever read a single one of them. I appreciate the site, but there just hasn't been anything that's grabbed my interest.
These are of course the relatively high-volume sites that are just taking up space on my list. There are also several nearly-dead feeds that may get cut shortly, but calling those out wouldn't be very fun. ;)While I'm still at something like 136 feeds, most of them are now relatively low volume. Besides CBC and Digg.com, most of them only post up a few a day or less. Much more manageable and much less daunting.
4 comments:
I think I'll have to do the same to Boing Boing!, but I never got into Tech Crunch. Too busy.
I do find that "Read All" is useful too :)
Donncha
There is never a time when my entire list is read, but I have had much success with categorizing everything. I have a large set of feeds that I have to watch for my job, and if there are unread items there they always get read first, then I have a cascading system where it gets less important that I read the feeds. It is important to only have feeds that you actually enjoy the content of, though.
One thing I don't do is try to read everything in a high-volume feed. If I miss a couple of days, I don't go back for it, because chances are I've read it somewhere else anyway.
I would love to have a feed reader that actually tracked my feed reading habits by feed. If it had built in rules you could even make it self cleaning. A rule example: if I don't view or read any items from a feed for 4 months then move the feed to the morgue category and do not pole the feed. Anyone know of a reader that does this?
Earl,
That's a good idea - one which I think I've heard before as well. I'm surprised no one has yet implemented it. At least not that I know of.
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