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I rely heavily on RSS feeds to get my daily fix of news. As you can see above, I don’t read a ridiculous amount of feeds but enough to keep me busy most of the day. One of the problems I’m starting to notice is that I’m spending a lot of time online just to keep up. I’m not sure how other people use RSS but i read everything that comes in. Maybe not “read” it all but definitely skim over the article. In the last 30 days, I’ve read over 24,000 articles. Thats a lot of reading and a lot of time invested to not fall behind. This reared its ugly head during my trip to Macworld this year. The internet at the hotel was so bad it was just about unusable unless it was early in the morning. So while I tried to keep up on stuff, I fell behind to the tune of about 3,000 unread items by the time I got home. It took me hours to just get through everything and catch up.

I’m finding I want to be doing more stuff on and off the computer but feel tied to my RSS reader. Catch up on podcasts, blog, World of Warcraft, watch TV shows, Netflix, workout, play my Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS, photography etc. I work nights so my time is split up between before work and after so I can’t just do a lot of stuff.

I’ve been bouncing around news readers for awhile, Bloglines, Newsgator, NetNewsWire, endo, NewsFire, Google Reader to name a few in the past months. I’ve settled on Google Reader due to its web interface so I can access my feeds from both home and work. It’s missing some nice features of desktop clients but its ability to be “everywhere once” outweighs everything else. One feature I missed was Dinosaurs in NetNewsWire. Basically It showed outdated feeds that haven’t updated in awhile.

Enter Google Reader Trends.

It shows statistics based on your feeds. This includes what your reading, what your starring and what your sharing along with subscription based stats such as frequently read and inactive. Inactive is what I’ve been missing. It shows me the Top 10, 20 and 40 feeds that haven’t been updated.

So starting today I’m going to “trim the fat” as they say. I’m going to start deleting feeds that I don’t really need or want to keep up on. This should help me feel less tied down and hopefully free up some more time do so other things. I’m also going to start using the Sharing feature in Google Reader to share what I find interesting. You can see my Shared page at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17007536064916393533. You can even subscribe to it to keep up to date.

My current OPML file is up on Share your OPLM if you’re interested in what feeds i read. This is the original file I will be trimming. I’ll post my new file when I’m finished.

I’ve been a Bloglines user for over a year now and have been mostly happy with them outside of a few small details. The layout could be better, some feeds wont import, way it handles feeds that update articles and clicking on the feed marks the all as read are probably my biggest peeves. I’ve tried standalone RSS readers but always went back to Bloglines. It was nice to have all my feeds marked as read no matter where i checked it. From my Mac, XP, cell phone, work, or home, I would never read the same article twice. It was perfect. Firefox extensions, Dashboard widgets would always keep me notified.

With my recent switch to Mac OS X, alot of the way i was used to computing has changed. I’ve completely eliminated my Windows XP desktop and my laptop is on its way out, so i don’t boot it up very often, so 98% of everything i do is now on my Mac. With this, I’ve been introduced to alot of new software. One has been NetNewsWire. I’ve tried it before as I give just about every peice of software recommended to me its 15secs of fame on my desktop. As with all other desktop RSS readers, everything is local and not
sync’d between multipy computers. With the latest NetNewsWire 2.1 beta, it added Newsgator syncing. I’ve never used Newsgator before but with the signup being free, what the hell. Installed NetNewsWire Lite 2.1 beta and signed up to Newsgator.

Like most people, change is hard. Even tho I welcome trying new ways, its hard to break old habits. One way I deal with this when using something new on the computer is to delete everything that has to do with the way I’ve been doing it. In my case here I deleted all my Bloglines bookmarks, bookmarklets and uninstalled all widgets and Firefox extensions. This way I can’t go back and if i want to do something, I’ll need to learn the new way like it or not. So I’ve been using it for a few days now and I’m still getting
used to using a desktop reader instead of a web reader. So far:

Pro’s

• See the actually unread count in my Dock
• Dont have to have my Web browser open
• Newsgator’s web layout is beautiful
• Feeds arent marked as read if i click on the feed
• Saves old articles like email
• Deals with updated feeds
• Free version of NetNewsWire

Cons:

• No Firefox extension
• Need to pay for the mobile version
• No free Windows client

Starting my new lifehack, GTD lifestyle today. First area I’m going to work on is web browsing. I spent an inordinate amount of time just surfing. So today i deleted all my bookmarks and installed Foxylicious and Bloglines. Going to use Del.icio.us for my bookmarks and bloglines to keep track of them using RSS. This way I don’t have to sit and keep a vigil over everything so i don’t miss anything. Had to uninstall Firefox 1.5b2 and go back to 1.0.7 just to get half the extensions and scripts to work again. No big deal, 1.5 didn’t add anything i cant live without.

Here are a few websites you probably don’t know about but should.

1) Digg - http://www.digg.com
“Digg is a technology news website that gives editorial control back to the community. Most technology websites allow users to suggest content by submitting links or stories to an editor. If the editor believes the story to be relevant to the masses, he or she moves the story to the homepage. With digg, users also submit links for review. But rather than allowing an editor to decide which links go on the homepage, the users do.”

Basically what these means is that users submit stories then users “digg” them. If a story is dug enough it gets moved from the digg area to the front page and into its category page. I find myself getting almost all my tech based news from digg these days. Whats nice is you will pick up some less “newsworthy” stories that you might miss on the big sites. At the very least, throw a LiveBookmark in Firefox of the frontpage news.

2) Audioscrobbler - http://www.audioscrobbler.com
“Audioscrobbler is a computer system that builds up a detailed profile of your musical taste. After installing an Audioscrobbler Plugin, your computer sends the name of every song you play to the Audioscrobbler Server. With this information, the Audioscrobbler server builds you a ‘Musical Profile’. Statistics from your Musical Profile are shown on your Audioscrobbler User Page, available for everyone to view.

There are lots of people using Audioscrobbler, but you probably won’t be interested in most of them. The Audioscrobbler Server calculates which people are most similar to you, based on shared musical taste, so you can take a look at what your peers are listening to.

With this information, Audioscrobbler is able to automatically generate suggestions for new songs/artists you might like. These suggestions are based on the same principles as Amazon’s “People who bought this also bought X,Y,Z”, but because the Audioscrobbler data is what people are actually listening to, the suggestions tend to make more sense than Amazon.

It’s not just pure statistics and recommendations, there are active forums, groups, weekly charts… The system is being worked on full time, and we plan to roll out many more exciting features. “

Audioscrobbler is a neat little opensource project. You install a plugin from there site into your favorite media player and from then every song you play is sent to audioscrobbler and compiles everything for you on your own user page. Such stuff as Recently Played, Top Artists and Top Tracks are all compiled for you. From these you are shown your Musical Neighbors which are other users that have similar musical tastes as you. There are forums for bands, topics, songs. Pretty cool to just see what your listening habits are.

3) Bloglines - http://www.bloglines.com
“Bloglines is a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no software to download or install — simply register as a new user and you can instantly begin accessing your account any time, from any computer or mobile device. And it’s FREE!

Bloglines is a window to a whole new world of dynamic content that is being created and distributed over the new “live” web. You can make your own personalized news page tailored to your unique interests from our index of tens of millions of live internet content feeds, including articles, blogs, images and audio. And it’s FREE!

Bloglines shields you from the confusion of news feed standards — RSS, Atom, and others. Bloglines allows you to search for, read and share any updates from your favorite news feed or blog regardless of its authoring technology. And it’s FREE! “

Ok, chances are you have heard of bloglines but if your not using it, you should be. Get access to any and all RSS feed all in one fast easy and convenient way. All you do its either search for feeds or manually add your own, then you can log into your account and see when there are new items. You never miss a new article and never have to read an article you already read. There are multiply notifiers so you know the sec a few item is posted on your favorite webpage. One of the biggest features i use is there mobile page. If you visit the homepage with a mobile browser, you get a mobile version so you keep up with your news on the go. There are other features such as blogging and blogrolls too. Bloglines, live it, learn it, love it.