Andrew Shell's Weblog - Latest Comments in Managing Feeds

Re: Managing Feeds

Andrew Shell — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:37:06 -0000

That sounds like a good system. One problem I has was the difficulty in picking appropriate categories. Since I&#39m a software engineer it seemed like there were a disproportionate amount of feeds in the Programming/Technology category. I&#39d also have blogs that didn&#39t really fit in a specific category. An example could be Boing Boing since they discuss just about anything.

Re: Managing Feeds

Andrew Shell — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:37:06 -0000

Re: Managing Feeds

Andrew Shell — Mon, 03 May 2010 06:37:06 -0000

That sounds like a good system. One problem I has was the difficulty in picking appropriate categories. Since I'm a software engineer it seemed like there were a disproportionate amount of feeds in the Programming/Technology category. I'd also have blogs that didn't really fit in a specific category. An example could be Boing Boing since they discuss just about anything.

Re: Managing Feeds

Christian Hudon — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:27:17 -0000

I have a system that uses some of the same ideas. The blogs in my feed reader are classified by topic, but I don&#39t use that classification to determine what I read every day. For that, I have two other, separate lists.

The first one is for blog where I want to read pretty much every entry and stay up-to-date. If I find that I can&#39t keep up with the reading volume after a while, I&#39ll drop the least interesting blog from that list.

The second list is for blogs that I want to check only from time to time, and where I won&#39t be reading everything or trying to keep up. I try to keep that list reasonably short too, but with less pressure than the previous list.

Finally, I may browse in the other categories for something to read if my first list ("must read") if empty presently or I want to read something different.

Re: Managing Feeds

Christian Hudon — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:27:17 -0000

Re: Managing Feeds

Christian Hudon — Sat, 01 May 2010 14:27:17 -0000

I have a system that uses some of the same ideas. The blogs in my feed reader are classified by topic, but I don't use that classification to determine what I read every day. For that, I have two other, separate lists.

The first one is for blog where I want to read pretty much every entry and stay up-to-date. If I find that I can't keep up with the reading volume after a while, I'll drop the least interesting blog from that list.

The second list is for blogs that I want to check only from time to time, and where I won't be reading everything or trying to keep up. I try to keep that list reasonably short too, but with less pressure than the previous list.

Finally, I may browse in the other categories for something to read if my first list ("must read") if empty presently or I want to read something different.

Re: Managing Feeds

Andrew Shell — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:27:41 -0000

Indeed. Actually a friend of mine created a website http://philtro.com/ which did some of this but eventually killed the RSS filtering because most people using his site were using it to filter twitter.

One of the issues (I&#39ve thought about this a bit) is some blogs pass in the full text of an article and others just a link or a snippet. There would need to be some logic to determine if you didn&#39t spend much time on a post because it was a snippet, because it was a short post or because you didn&#39t find it interesting. Also it wouldn&#39t know if you were reading a post for a while or if you were checking your feeds then got distracted talking to a coworker. You would really need some sort of way to manually rank it.

Re: Managing Feeds

Steve Evans — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:19:21 -0000

Interesting approach. I&#39ve been trying to figure out how I want to tackle this myself. What if the reader kept track of some metrics about the feeds/items as you&#39re reading through them? Granted Google Reader now has a "Sort by &#39Magic&#39" option that I&#39m guessing does this too, but they haven&#39t put out any details on it. I was thinking about a reader that tracked the items you actually clicked into, how much time you spent looking over the item, how much content is in the item, did you click through to the actual article, etc. Then over time it starts filtering out the content that you normally dismiss. That way you don&#39t have to do anything extra when reading through your feeds that you normally do, but it will start giving you the quality content you&#39re after. Is that something like what you were originally thinking?

Re: Managing Feeds

Steve Evans — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:19:21 -0000

Re: Managing Feeds

Andrew Shell — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:27:41 -0000

Re: Managing Feeds

Steve Evans — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:19:21 -0000

Re: Managing Feeds

Andrew Shell — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:27:41 -0000

One of the issues (I've thought about this a bit) is some blogs pass in the full text of an article and others just a link or a snippet. There would need to be some logic to determine if you didn't spend much time on a post because it was a snippet, because it was a short post or because you didn't find it interesting. Also it wouldn't know if you were reading a post for a while or if you were checking your feeds then got distracted talking to a coworker. You would really need some sort of way to manually rank it.

Re: Managing Feeds

Steve Evans — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:19:21 -0000

Interesting approach. I've been trying to figure out how I want to tackle this myself. What if the reader kept track of some metrics about the feeds/items as you're reading through them? Granted Google Reader now has a "Sort by 'Magic'" option that I'm guessing does this too, but they haven't put out any details on it. I was thinking about a reader that tracked the items you actually clicked into, how much time you spent looking over the item, how much content is in the item, did you click through to the actual article, etc. Then over time it starts filtering out the content that you normally dismiss. That way you don't have to do anything extra when reading through your feeds that you normally do, but it will start giving you the quality content you're after. Is that something like what you were originally thinking?