RSS Reading
A few months ago the topic of blog reading habits and strategies was talked about in this blog. A walk, a skip and hop here we are a few months older and have we learned anything about reading web feeds. Is there a secret to it? I do not know? I do know what I am doing now seems to work … until a better solution comes along.
My main feed reader is Google Reader. I do have a couple of others as you well know. And these are alternates of my Google Reader, in case of emergencies. Each nearly an exact copy of what I have in Google Reader, courtesy of the OPML of my Google Reader.
What I basically do is organize my feeds in Google Reader by Subject and Importance. There are feeds that I have to read daily and there are feeds that I do research on a daily basis. And there are feeds that I like to read and feeds of my friends which I can read but on a more leisurely pace.
Juned’s Feed Reading Habit
I have a Daily Read folder I read by Subject I read my friends blogs I have those fun feeds
In other words its a matter of organizing and identifying that must and can be read. So far I have grouped the feeds into:
A DAILY READ FOLDER ONE TO SEVERAL SUBJECT FOLDERS FRIENDS FOLDER FUN FOLDER
This works for me because I just go to a particular folder to read the a particular set of feeds; know which one is a priority and know which can be read later; and one can easily delete or purge the feeds per folder. And by putting a star tag on a particular article/post one can easily retrieved by viewing starred items.
At least this works for me for now.
I do something kind of similar, at least with respect to your daily and subject folders. I have a “favorites” folder that is, essentially, my daily folder. I set the GReader gadget on my iGoogle page (which is my browser’s home page) to the “favorites” tag, so that I’m always seeing the newest posts for those blogs when I go ‘home.’ Others I read depending upon my mood — sometimes, I might be more in the mood to read tech blogs that aren’t in my “favorites,” sometimes politics, sometimes science, and so on, so I’ll focus on those particular subject folders. Or, if I’m feeling particularly serendipitous, I’ll just click on “All items” and work my way through the morass.
One thing I do that I wanted to mention because I find it particularly helpful is put *all* new subscriptions into a “New” folder. Usually, “New” is my next stop after I get through my favorites. I do that so I don’t end up cluttering my list with subscriptions I mean to try out but am not yet sure I want to keep. All new subscriptions stay in “New” until I decide I’m keeping them, in which case I move them to the appropriate subject folder, or decide they are something I can live without, in which case I unsubscribe.
Michael, I like your suggestion. It can come in particularly useful. I am going to use it as well. Thanks.