arghyle

I was going to post this on the blog, but threw it up on XYZ instead. Here is is again…
8 easy ways to optimize your RSS reading.

They have helped me out a lot, but they’re my ideas. Hopefully they can help out some other people and allow you to either read more or spend less time reading things that don’t interest you.

From the article:

1. Use a good RSS reader
A quality RSS reader is your best (and pretty much your only) tool for optimized reading. Many people agree that Google Reader is the best option here, but it is not the only option. A solid reader will give you all the tools you need to organize your feeds as well as to quickly add and remove them. Online readers are generally the way to go because you can read from anywhere, but the advantage of desktop tools is that you can limited how often they refresh so you don’t spend too long reading. A good idea it so only allow feeds to refresh ever few hours so you don’t spend too much time reading.

2. Delete Duplicates
If you’re interests tend towards the mainstream there are probably multiple sites that cover the topics you want to read about. It’s great to get more than one point of view and not miss any news, but if two sites are very similar you can save a lot of time by dropping one. For example, if you like video games you might read Kotaku (average 44.4 posts/day) and Joystiq (average 22.3 posts/day), both are great sites, but there is a lot of overlap there. By cutting one you can get almost all the news you would by reading both and still save time.

3. Go Mobile
Lot’s of devices can handle RSS now so if you are on the road a lot it makes sense to get some of your reading done then. Whether you have a BlackBerry, a Nokia N800, or just a laptop, there are ways to get to your RSS feeds so you can get some reading out of the way. The best way to do this is to find a way so sync your readers so that you don’t have to mark items as read later, but even if you can’t sync up, reading on the run will save time later. Google Gears can be very helpful with this.

4. Subscribe to Tags or Topics
With many blogs you can subscribe to tags or topics instead of reading the whole blog. This way you can read what you are interested in and forget the rest. An example of this is on Seeking Alpha where you can subscribe to sectors or themes that interest you instead of getting all their posts every days through the main RSS feed. This will cut back on the total feeds you read and limit posts to what interests you.

5. Make Pipes
Yahoo Pipes is an incredible tool for any dedicated RSS reader. Using this you can customize feeds by integrating them or pulling out the posts you want and skipping the rest. One of the Pipes I made searches though a number of tech job boards and only returns the jobs in New York.

6. Use Google Blog Search
Another way to focus only on the topics that you want is to use Blog Search. Here you can create an RSS feed that shows all the items from around the web with a certain search string in it. For example, if you want to only know about a certain cell phone, you don’t have to read a dozen cell phone and mobile blogs everyday, you can just have a dedicated feed with those items. Here is one for the HTC Vogue.

7. Focus on Personal Blogs, Not News Organizations
This is obviously going to vary based on your interests, but if you focus on personal blogs instead of large organizations you will have to deal with fewer posts and less repeats, plus you won’t have to deal with short breaking news announcements (that you will hear about anyway) or reworded press releases. Then check out your favorite sites once or twice a day to get the rest. Sites like Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, and Google News are great for this.

8. Follow the Trends
Some tools (like Google Reader) offer a trends tool that will let you get a better feel for what you are reading and what you are skipping. By using this you can begin to prioritize your feeds and delete the ones that you are not reading. If a site seems interesting, but you are only reading a small percentage of their posts, you should try to figure out how you can isolate that content or get the information from a site that is more to your liking.

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