How I keep Informed Without My RSS Reader Killing Me

I got this question today from Lars Pind, who is a brilliant former developer now coaching other software developers:

6. Which blogs or websites do you read to keep up-to-date at work?

And i realized that i have just had more than 6 months of RSS reader boycot (inspired by Peter Krantz). Until recently, my reader statistics looked like this:

google-reader-trend-jespers-reading-ban-2007-10-03-crop.png

google-reader-trend-jespers-reading-ban-2007-10-03.pnggoogle-reader-trend-jespers-reading-ban.png

Here is my answer to Lars’ question:

6. Which blogs or websites do you read to keep up-to-date at work?

Some Rails related, some usability related, some webstandards related. I stopped  reading everything and put my RSS reader on ice for 6 months (it has almost 300 feeds). Instead i subscribe to 5 “popularity” feeds  on my netvibes page that tell me what most people read:

http://del.icio.us/popular/rails
http://del.icio.us/popular/webstandards
http://del.icio.us/popular/usability
http://del.icio.us/popular/accessibility
http://del.icio.us/popular/ajax
http://del.icio.us/popular/web2.0
http://del.icio.us/popular/

The tip works like this for me: I spend less time navigating in my reader, and the most relevant stuff will eventually show up because the collective intelligence of crowds bring the most interesting stuff to my attention.

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7 Responses to “How I keep Informed Without My RSS Reader Killing Me”

  1. ghoppr Says:

    That’s a really good tip – just added those delicious feeds to my netvibes.
    Nice one

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  4. P.Arora Says:

    If your reader is looking to stay on top of usability articles/news she/he can read http://www.usabilitymagazine.com – it aggregates various blogs, including yours.

  5. now » The tip works like this for me: I spend less time navigating in my... Says:

    […] of crowds bring the most interesting stuff to my attention. — Jesper Rønn-Jensen – How I keep Informed Without My RSS Reader Killing Me March 7th, 2008 / 0 Comments / […]

  6. Seonewbie Says:

    I use yahoo pipes to aggregate interesting blogs into a single feed :)

  7. Travel Blog Says:

    Thanks for the tip – I am getting swamped. It still doesn’t make me feel that I am not missing something though!