The Hot Iron

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Cartoon Barry Tagged Me On My Google Reader Usage

Just as I was pondering how I should categorize all of my blog feeds into folders in Google Reader, I got tagged by Cartoon Barry on how I use Google Reader for reading and managing RSS feeds.

As I mentioned before, I have only used Google Reader for managing feeds, and tried to
keep that number to around 200 – and it is at 217 today, with a few added and deleted over the last several weeks.  The opening message on the Trends page of the Reader states, “From your 217 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 2,862 items, starred 1 items, and shared 0 items.” Wow, that many?

Here’s what my reading looks like over the last 30 days:

Trying to maintain a balance of work and life, I don’t read feeds as much on the weekends, and if I do it is using the Reader on my Treo, which by its nature and design is much slower than reading in a browser.

The times of the day that I read most often did not surprise me:

For those who know me, I am not a morning person, so I rise early, get caffeinated and catch up on email and feeds prior to the start of the work day.

For the days of the week that I read, this also was not surprising:

Some days it seems like there are more feeds than others, but that is just a gut feel.  I know recently my postings have been on a less regular schedule, and that has been more related to the projects I have been working on.

This is the first time I have been tagged, so now I really feel like a blogger!  To keep this going, I will tag the following people – Daniel Sitter, Matt Maldre and David Dalka.  I’m not sure what readers they use, but neither did Cartoon Barry.

Thanks. I’ve already been tagged and I’ve got my search history truned off.

P.S. Technorati did not count your link to me.

test

Hi David… you have tracking of your stats in Google Reader turned off?

Let me know what you hear about Technorati’s development issues…

mp/m

Heyo! I use NetNewsWire for my RSS reading. I check it just once a day in the evening when I get home from work. I might check it a second time before I go to bed, or maybe in the morning. But I try to keep it to once a day.

I have about 1,000 feeds, but they are more for things like people in flickr, delicious, and 43things. And categories in flickr, delicious, and ebay. The categories range about 50 different keyword searches that are quite rare. like: chicago and croquet. So if there’s a flickr photo that is tagged with chicago and croquet, i get a notification.

although it’s funny you mention this, cuz just 15 minutes ago i was talking with a friend about what RSS aggregator i use and the frequency of use. I might just play around with Google reader a bit, but i’m extremely pleased with NetNewsWire, so it will take A LOT for me to switch.

Hey Matt - Thanks for the info.  1,000 feeds?  Wow!  But I like your “discipline” in reading blogs just once a day.

mp/m

Mike, I must confess that I am not a Google Reader user. I have checked it out, but I find that routing my most important feeds to my MyYahoo front page makes the most sense for me. I also use a wonderful aggregator called MySyndicaat which allows me to combine my feeds into a single feed for easy streaming to my reader.

You can see an example of this on my blog where I have a subscribe option listed for the best sales and marketing articles from a variety of blogs posted each day. It’s a great service.

These two tools then allow me to skim over the “headlines” allowing me to pick the ones of interest to read over. I have learned to read and absorb material quickly so this approach works well for me. 

Thanks for thinking of me.

Hi Daniel - Thanks for your reply and no worries - it was my first tagging, and you can’t really tell who is using what feed reader… which is the beauty of RSS, as it doesn’t matter!

mp/m

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