Comments on: Help! Google Reader Owns Me.

By: Linda

Linda — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:51:51 +0000

Jessica, I don’t think they’re f’ed up at all — I think it’s just a feature of Google Reader that it doesn’t display images on lots of kinds of sites. That’s not a complaint about GFY; it’s just a quirk of looking at things on Reader.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:54:21 +0000

I had no idea GFY’s feed links were f’ed up — we can’t fix them if no one tells us they’re broken.

I’ll see what I can do.

By: NancyB

NancyB — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:57:39 +0000

…And here I was just deleting some blogs out of my “favorites” because I think I need to spend time knitting and not reading blogs about people knitting! Yours, of course, remains in my list of favorites.
I may have to try that Google Reader!

By: delta888

delta888 — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:47:58 +0000

The irony? When Rinaldo pointed me to your new site and explained he checked it on a tab, I asked him if he’d tried GReader yet.

I passed 1000+ a day long looooong ago. I just accept it.

I sort stuff into a short short pile of must reads, which I keep under 40 a day. (Things what things made the cut, btw. )

Then, for Feed Settings, I mark stuff like Engadget to a folder called “*Mark.As.Read” (The * is so it sorts on top). To make myself feel better, I go to that folder, and mark it all as read straight off. Aaaaaaah. 3000 messages gone at one time.

That way, if I want to go and look through my *read* engadget items for iPhone news, I can use Search.

Yes, it’s totally sucked me in. But don’t worry: just like eBay, the hold loosens.

By: KC

KC — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:22:50 +0000

I use Bloglines and feel the need to check it multiple times a day (nice for when you just can’t deal with work anymore) and have had to cut some blogs out of my life. So long Gizmodo and SlashDot. I’ve got my eye on you DesignSponge, try to keep yourself in line or face the consequences. The problem is once I’ve dropped them from the reader, I never go there anymore. Somehow I have gotten used to the idea that all important content will just be fed to me as if I am a baby bird in a nest with little entertaining worms coming my way all day long. Lazy is what I am.. just lazy. And also, can GoFugYourself please fix their feed links… drives me crazy!

By: LN

LN — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:20:14 +0000

Lifehacker had some tips a while back on how to filter out Gawker media blogs by tag. I think you can find it here.

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:10:18 +0000

I use livejournal as my newsreader. They have a great filtering system that lets me set up different lists to read, however I want to organize them. I’m sure there are better ways to organize it, but it works well for me. Plus, I find the lj format easy when I’m just scrolling past things. I manage to notice, if not actually read and process, over 500 posts a day, if I’m not busy doing too much else.

By: Judy

Judy — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:47:48 +0000

I love (love love) GR because it translates down to my mobile phone (it’s a smartphone type) and I can read things at lunch. The firewall folks are weird about what they do and don’t let through at the office, so I can’t count on being able to kill a lunch hour reading blogs. I can, however, read the smaller stuff on my phone, and then catch the feeds that have photos (Engadget, Crave . . . I mean you!)

Same with Twitter. It’s blocked by the company firewall, but the mobile version is always available if I have a few minutes and just need a break. Love it!

By: Andy3000

Andy3000 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:59:50 +0000

1000+?! How do you do it? I wake up every morning to about 300 and I process another couple of hundred a day, and sometimes I feel like that’s all I have time to do.

(Don’t tell my boss…)

By: E.

E. — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:03:59 +0000

I also use Google Reader, and I’ve got a similar number of Posts Per Day that I read. To a certain extent it can be overwhelming, but it’s about folders and prioritizing. I file everything into appropriate folders and then hit them in the order of a) things I definitely want to keep up with in real-time; b) things that have the fewest number of new items, since they’re easy to knock off; and c) everything else.

The other key is to just plow through the feed list, opening things for later reading in new tabs. It’s WAY faster to do it this way than it is to go through and read each item as you open it. I set firefox so it automatically opens any link I command-click (which opens it in a new tab) in the background so my main tab doesn’t lose focus and I can keep plowing through the list.

Also, the j and k keyboard shortcuts (next item and previous item) are way helpful when plowing through a long list. If you skim something and see it’s useless, it’s way faster to hit “j” than to scroll through everything.