Thanks for the great list! I’m definitely going to implement number 11 immediately and have an “audition feeds” folder. After the trial period, I can move them either into the appropriate category, or into the trash. Simple, but great idea that I hadn’t thought of!

Thanks again,
Jay

Very useful post.

Doesn’t work for New York Times articles, though. They’ll just pop right out and load in your open window.

@Jay – Yes, overload is as bad as not enough info

@Tibi – When the pressure is off you can enjoy keeping up to date

@Nicolai – yeah context is important with links, one of the annoyances of twitter in fact

@Shane – Shared items are great, it is just finding the right people to hook up with that is the challenge

@Chris – Prune away, you will thank yourself

@Andrea_R – It’s funny how I still have feeds that I never really react to thinking “maybe one day”. Seems there are a lot of blogs that do one or two killer posts then go off the boil.

@Jason – I follow far fewer niches than I used to, that helped me a lot

@Reese – Indeed, we are our own best teachers when it comes to surfing behavior

@Joanna – I hate to be so blunt about partial feeds but when every second counts …

@Henning – Twitter is fast becoming a great addition to our arsenal

@andy – It is good as an addition rather than a main tool. I prefer popurls clones and river of news, but in niches where I only have to keep one eye open for the big stories (like gadgets) it is very useful

@Ed – All depends on who you follow and how much you get sucked in really. There have been news stories I saw way earlier than I would otherwise due to Twitter. Takes a lot of tuning though to get that good signal/noise ratio, PLUS I see it primarily as “coffee break” mode rather than “research” mode

@ukgimp – Worried? I’m *counting* on it!

@The Masked – A good % of mine are churning but I need to trim further. Funny how few you miss.

@Chris – Twitter has been a boon to me but also can be a time drain

@Jen – Good tip about Google personal homepage, will have to play with that

Another thing I find helpful is to set up 3 different ‘tabs’ (one for each of 3 topics) on a Google personalized home page, each showing only the feeds from my hand-picked top-priority blogs – a quick glance at each tab first thing in the morning gives me that ‘river of news’ overview, so I can get on with the work day without a nagging feeling that I might be missing something vital.

If a feed is good and or important it will come around again. But if you get too many of them you probably don’t end up reading them anyway.

The Masked Millionaire

I just tried out AideRSS this morning, and while it looks cool, the filters don’t match my preferences very well. I usually only read about 20% of the items that come in on my feeds (based on the headline) then mark the rest as read, like you recommend.

Unfortunately, AideRSS picks the most popular items, not the most useful to me. I know it can be tweaked with filters, but is it worth the time? I’d love to hear from an experienced user.

I’m guessing you’re keeping up with a lot more than me but even so it can be hard at times, and easy to keep distracted.

I try and read / follow things with a sense of purpose – which is partly to fit within my main focus (writing confidence) but also a broader purpose in blogging – to make human connections, to learn, to meet interesting people. Otherwise I’d cut out some of the fun, human stuff which makes the whole escapade worthwhile.

Joanna

PS I’m with you on partial feeds

One of the things that’s insightful about this post, Chris, is it actually teaches a person how to be a better blogger/twitterer/etc… how to cut through the noise and get your stuff and news read. When I relaunch my blog, I’ll be using this insights and your others to help me be a better blogger and network user.

My feeds in Google Reader are getting out of control again. I need to take more advantage of Shared Items lists. I already subscribe to 2 (Scoble and Steve Rubel’s ‘thinkers’ list). Does anyone have any suggestions for other good filters to subscribe to?

I have my own ‘Shared Items’ link blog for techwhimsy.com, but I definitely don’t presume it is of any interest to anyone but myself (it’s my ‘re-read this later’ pile more than anything else).

Shane