Dear Lazyweb: Feed Categories
Google recently released an update to Reader that gave it a more visually pleasing look and changed some of the functionality. In playing with the new design, I started to re-tag my subscribed feeds.
I currently feel that my tagging system is a bit substandard. Nearly everything that is tagged Ubuntu also falls under Linux and Tech. Miscellany has everything else that I can’t seem to categorize otherwise, like Futility Closet and Not Always Right. Also, as you can see, I don’t always get a chance to read every single new item. One person suggested to use a Favorites tag to separate the feeds that they always read away from the others, but I’m not sure how well this would work in practice.
How do you organize your RSS Feeds? Do you use Google Reader or does some other application (preferably not locked in to one computer) work better for you?
Aha, so that’s why Helvetireader has become a bit ugly. Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.
I don’t subscribe to as many feeds as you, but those I am subscribed to, is organised in folders: Blogs, Comedy, Humour, Planets, Publications. I try to keep the amount of subscriptions low, so I can read them all.
I put Not Always Right in Humour, obviously :)
Comment by Mats Taraldsvik — December 5, 2008 @ 10:37 am
I’ve taken a liking to Tiny Tiny RSS at tt-rss.org. It gives me the functionality I need and I host it myself without any issues. I can easily configure my browsers to use it as the feed reader. The layout is simple and there are enough config options to make me happy with it.
I cannot offer any organization tips as I organize in a similar way to you and it works for me:)
Comment by Chuck — December 5, 2008 @ 11:54 am
You are doing it wrong, I’ve learned a better way on
http://www.43folders.com/2007/11/27/sink-or-swim-managing-rss-feeds-better-groups
It might not look like the best approach at first, but you will do better this way. I do.
Simply put, this system uses, 4 tags and they are News, Can’t Miss, Skip’ Em, Not News.
I find that after a while I get tired of marking all the items in Skip ‘Em as read, and I end up unsubscribing to feeds that in the end where not important to me.
Comment by Flávio Martins — December 5, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
+1 to Flávio’s comment.
I sort my feeds by similar criteria: Daily, Slow, Slowest, Tech (High Volume) etc… The feeds I don’t want to miss out on I put it Daily, and simply go through the rest of the feeds when/if I have time. I don’t mind marking all as read once I get done with my Daily feeds.
Comment by Ryan — December 5, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
I been using google reader more lately, and sometimes Liferea, which is good too. The advantages Reader has over Liferea for me is:
speed: as soon as start reader all the feeds are updated, Liferea checks each one and if you have lots of feeds it could take some time.
recommendations: I like this feature, I picked up a few good ones.
look: I like the new look, this will be a prelude to offering themes.
I have Reader starting with prism (Ubuntu 8.04), and with the previous version of Reader if click on a link it would open another prism windows directly behind it, but with the new reader it opens a tab in Firefox, suits me perfect.
Comment by Zac — December 5, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
You need to stop thinking about organising for the sake of organising.
Reflect on your own behavior. You read news; work-related at the morning; leisure stuff in the weekend, etc. Those are great categories because they are about YOU.
See, when you develop a commercial website, you likely put the customer/visitor first. You would offer navigation based on their typical needs, rather than structure the navigation based on what you have to offer.
When you get to decide the navigation of the feeds you selected to serve you; put YOURSELF in the centre.
What do YOU NEED.
Forget about wether the feeds will think you put them well. Why do you read those feeds? When do you read those feeds? Where do you read those feeds?
Those are the correct ‘categories’…..
Also, Google Reader allows you to double/triple added a feed. It will still mark the items as read once. So, don’t fear duplicate feeds either.
Comment by Meneer R — December 5, 2008 @ 7:15 pm
Oh, my feeds are categorised as:
‘personal’, ‘work’, ‘bored’, ‘drunk’
But that’s just me. You could very well use:
‘morning’,'evening’, etc.
Comment by Meneer R — December 5, 2008 @ 7:17 pm
+1 for Flávio and Ryan
I base my tags on urgency/priority, not on the subject.
Every morning I read everything in the daily category. When I have time to kill I will read the other categories. If a category/feed has too many unread items, I unsubscribe.
Comment by Walther — December 9, 2008 @ 5:01 pm