Open Thread: How Do You Read RSS Feeds?
Leo at Zen Habits has published a series of productivity hacks including number 8: “Simplify your information streams, and plow through feeds and email.” Here’s how he puts this into practice in his feed reading:
Reading my blogs is a good example: I use Google Reader, and when I check my feeds in the morning, I use the “view all” mode, where I’m reading all the blogs at once. I use the mouse wheel and just scroll down through them all, reading the headlines quickly. If I see a headline that sounds interesting, I’ll click on it to open in a new window to read when I’m done, then continue to scroll through the rest of my unread posts. I can quickly get through more than 100 posts this way. Then I’ll go and quickly read the posts I’ve opened in new tabs. If I don’t have time to read them now, I’ll bookmark them in a folder I call “Inbox” to read later. When I have time later, I’ll read through all my Inbox posts, and delete them (or save them elsewhere if I want to post about them). But the key is to crank through them, really only reading the really interesting ones.
This is similar to my own approach to feed reading, except I use the keyboard for maximum speed. I use Google Reader in List view (as opposed to Expanded view). When I begin feed reading, I use the keyboard short cut “ga” to list all unread posts. I then move through through the list with the “n” key to move down, “m” to mark read without opening, “o” key to read any posts of interest, “v” to open the original post in a new tab in case I want to bookmark or comment on it, and “s” to star anything I’d like to think further about.
How do you read your feeds? Do you use Google Reader or another aggregator? Do you wander leisurely through unread articles or try to plow through them like Leo and I do?
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I read my feeds via netvibes.
The amount of information, that can be viewed on a single page with netvibes, is far greater than what can be viewed using the typical “Tabular View” of any feed reader.
I can have one tab named Web.2.0 on netvibes, on which I can add Techcruch, Web Worker Daily, Giga Om, Solution Watch, Scobleizer, 43 folders and Ajaxian.
This way,on even a smaller laptop screen at 1280 X 800 resolution,If I choose a 3 column layout, I get to see all of those feeds at a single glance.
No Feed Reader comes close to this, in terms of the sheer amount of information, that can be aggregated, by such a “Dashboard Style” approach.
It is simple common sense. Why do think newspapers, are laid out the way they are?
Netvibes, Live.com and google.com/ig have all just taken the same concept and adapted it for the computer screen.
I used to use bloglines, but I switched to Google Reader. Actually, I did so because I started using Google’s personalized home page and it was nice to have gmail and my feeds all in one place. It’s not perfect, but it works for me.
Google Reader is the only way to go IMO. This is an issue I have spent a fair amount of time looking into and I think Reader is the best way to get through your feeds in a reasonable amount of time, keep them organized, and not miss anything worthwhile.
I currently read about 110 feeds which is a lot of information to parse each day, especially in expanded view, but it is the best way I have found to now miss important information. You definitely need to prioritize and be able to skim to recognize what’s important…
I use Alesti, an online reader that uses the traditional Outlook-style format. The problem with almost all the others is that many feeds only give you a brief summary, forcing you to open a new tab to read the entire post. Imagine doing that with dozens of posts! Alesti has an embedded browser that lets you see the entire post right there.
I f you have to read 110 feeds on a daily basis, traditional feed readers are the way to go.
On the other hand, if you want to read about 30 to 40 feeds a day, a good start page like netvibes or pageflakes would be good enough, IMO.
I use a combination of tools, with different feeds getting different tools. Some go in my feed reader, Gregarius, while others are delivered to my desktop over IM with Feed Crier, and others are delivered to my web site, River of News style.
I also wrote about how I use Feed Crier in conjunction with other readers to manage my daily feed flow.
(Disclosure: I’m the founder of Feed Crier)
I bookmark my feeds into folders on Firefox (on my Windows and Linux machines) and Safari (of course, on the Mac). Works fine for me. I’m not a fan of applications that only read feeds when the browser I use will do it for me.
I’ve spent a lot of time playing with different feed readers, but I’ve settled on a three-pronged approach to reading feeds:
1) I’ve set up ten custom feeds (usually 10-20 similar separate feeds combined) using Yahoo Pipes that weed out duplicates and sort the content of my feeds. They also weed out entries with specific words like “Apple” (I don’t have a Mac).
2) I view my Yahoo Pipes feeds in Google Reader
3) I view my most commonly accessed (cnn, cnet, etc) feeds as bookmarks in FireFox.
It works great for me.
In NetNewsWire. I have an Alerts group of important feeds (comment feeds, etc.) that updates automatically. A daily group with weather and news feeds that updates at 8AM and a weekly group with all of the blogs I read that I update manually when I have time to kill.
hmm… there are two aspects to this. One is the issue of productivity and how one moves through a lot of information that is regularly updated. The other question is why we have so many feeds we subscribe to. After all, if you’re reading 10% of the posts that hit your feed reader, is there utility to having so many subscriptions?
I’m going to start with the last point – there IS usefulness to having a lot of subscriptions even if you don’t read most of the posts since every once in a while a gem will pop up from a feed that you may have passed over fro days or even weeks. If the cost of maintaining that subscription is low and the occasional payoff is there, why not subscribe? Added to this is that multiple subs will show you trends.. are several people all commenting on a point? Hmmm… pay attention to that. And you have several opinions all right there.
All that said, I don’t like the “scan headlines” approach used in isolation. It’s too dependent on the poster being a good headline writer and in some cases (Wil Wheaton for example) the headline is deliberately not expository. But.. damn it makes it easy to move through 100+ posts.
What I do is combine this with a second filter. I use Google Reader and look at all items in headline view, reading what catches my eye. I’ve also tagged some feeds as “Daily” meaning that I really want to cglance at them every day if I can. I leave this expanded and, once done with the headline scan I look at the feeds in the Daily group. If I see unread posts from a source I usually find to be valuable I click on that feed so I can see that they’ve written. Often enough, I see posts whose headline didn’t catch me, but which is interesting.
Too often the emphasis on getting through lots of feeds really fast leads to the ‘I’m uber since I get through 659 feeds in an hour” attitude. The point of feeds shouldn’t be about making sure you power through every available bit of information out there, but about enriching your personal and professional life with information that you find interesting or valuable (both hopefully). Too often we focus on personal productivity and getting a lot of things done… occasionally we need to step back and ask why we’re doing those things in the first place.