If you’re the kind who keeps track of information on the web by subscribing to RSS feeds, chances are things aren’t entirely satisfactory.
You’re probably swamped with an ever-growing backlog, yet reading your feeds takes too long. You’re annoyed at several feeds repeating the same news item. And your feed list looks like one chaotic mess.
Surely this wasn’t the way it promised to be – you thought you could wade through information effortlessly with RSS.
A few simple techniques and just a little but of discipline, though, can get you back in business. I’m assuming you’re using Google Reader.
Adding feeds:
- Subscribe, as far as possible, to blogs that do filtering for you. For example, instead of subscribing to several of the “official” Google blogs, I merely subscribe to “Googling Google”, “Google Blogoscoped”, and “Google Operating System” – they’ll give me all the news I need to know about Google, and other rumors/previews as well.
- Add feeds liberally, but label them smartly. If you see an interesting website add it to your feed list, but label it immediately.
- Label according to use/function, not topic. Labeling your feeds “politics”, “tech”, “humor” is no use. Something like this makes more sense:
- A “News” label for your online newspaper/Google News feeds.
- A “Daily” label for other, topical feeds you read once a day.
- A “Evenings” label for humor blogs, cartoons, and the like.
- A “DB” label for websites that spew information you’ll only need to refer to once in a while (techies, I’m talking Engadget, Ars Technica, Gizmodo and the like). Use Google Reader’s search function when digging out info later. (Thanks to Steve Rubel for this one.)
Processing feeds:
- Read different labels at different times of the day. From the above example, you’d read “News” as soon as you come in to work, “Evenings” to unwind, and so on.
- Use the “List” view. You can see more headlines that way, so if you don’t want to read it, there’s no need to scroll through it to reach the next item. Also, you don’t have to wait for images to load.
- Use “Mark all as read” liberally. After scanning 20 news headlines and reading 4, for instance, make all 20 read. The other 16 never mattered anyway.
- Use keyboard shortcuts. At a minimum, “n” and “p” are “next item” and “previous item”, and “u” hides/shows the feed list pane on the left.
- View entire labels instead of clicking and viewing individual blogs. For instance, simply click on “News” and sift through all your headlines – what do you care what order they’re in or what feed they came from? They’re all news.
- Star actionable posts. Once you’re done reading, see all your starred posts and take action for each of them.
- Go offline! The offline feature (at the top right of your GR page) downloads your latest 200 feed items. Then disconnect your computer from the network, and read through your feeds without distraction.
Maintaining feeds:
- Friends’ shared items can be useful/amusing. Or they can be a pain. Hide friends whose shared items you don’t want to view.
- Use the trends view in Google Reader to see which feeds you don’t read any more, or ones which haven’t been updated in ages. Unsubscribe from them.
Work smarter, not harder.