Bloglines De-Clutter

by Christopher Paul on September 23, 2006

So the informational de-clutter continues.  This morning, I ravaged my RSS feed aggregator, Bloglines.  Although I do like running local applications for certain things (more functionality that what JScript can provide), web based apps like Bloglines (and Gmail and others) make it easy to have all your information in one easily accessible place.  I’ve been using Bloglines for a few months now and like it very much.  Even when I do settle on an OS, I’ll probably still use it as my RSS reader.

Bloglines makes it easy to add feeds to your list and over those few months, I’ve added over 150 feeds to my list.  They are organized by category type like news, C.G Feeds (my own or friends), Gossip, Technology, etc.  in my attempt to reduce the clutter, I deleted about 15 feeds I almost never read.  I’m going to continue to reduce the amount of feeds I watch over the next few days but I also want to organize them better.  But Bloglines only allows for category folders – not sub folders – so I am finding it hard to further tweak my feeds.

In the technology folder, for example, I could create a sub folder for software development for the HTML, CSS, AJAX, and web design blogs I read.  It could also have a gadgets folder for the many sites I read about the latest and greatest.  Still, there could be more folders for site that cover Web 2.0.  The subdivision could go on and on.  And while I don’t want to get too granular, I can’t have 50 feeds in technology and not have them narrowed down by title alone.

Nevertheless, I’m still trying my best to show less information at any given time.  I’ve changed my viewing options to only show the feeds that have updates.  So I don’t have to worry about the alphabetical organization for all the feeds – just the ones with new articles.  I’ve also turned off the option that shows updated articles as new for all but a few sites who’s news can change frequently enough to change the fact basis of the posts.

I’ve got a lot of work to do, however, and want to get my reading down to 75 feeds or less.  I also want to remove those feeds that don’t have real value (like my calendar and to-do feeds) and those feeds that have massive updates; I can’t follow Digg or AskMetaFilter because they get populated too quickly.

Anyway, thats where I stand.  I’m going to take a break from the informational work and focus on the physical work around the house and maybe go out later to break up the day.

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