On Unbolding
Just to follow up with what should be the final update on the RSS thing, in the last few days I've bought a license for NetNewsWire and deleted my blo.gs subscriptions. The number of sites I'm reading continues to grow - this morning it's at 217 (up from 149 a month ago).
I've noticed a couple of things happening as a result of this change:
- I rarely use my work desktop computer for web browsing any more - it's all happening on my laptop where my RSS reader is
- I can plough through a load of articles in that awkward downtime where there's no network connectivity
- Sites are losing their personalites - I'm already loosing track of who said what, particularly when read in bulk
- ...but if I need to, I can search the last few months of feeds and find a particular article in a few seconds
- The number of links I'm posting seems to have dropped. This may just be a temporary glitch, or may be related to other things such as my current workload
I'm also reminded of some of Leonard's thoughts on info-glut from a few weeks ago:
Normally [...] you don't worry that much if you missed a show, or if there are other good things on. However, Tivo changes this relationship for many people. There's a "queue" to go through. Note that current generation RSS readers linearize blogs analogously. This is bad.
and the classic quote from Lane Becker:
I feel like I make things un-bold for a living now
Now I'm living with yet another source of unbolding on a daily basis I imagine I'll be thinking around this area some more.