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In the Beginning, There Were Bookmarks

My method for keeping track of online information/reading/sites has undergone yet another permutation. Yes, this is going to be an info junkie whinge; if you see bookmarks as a complete solution to tracking web-based stuff you can stop right here. (If, on the other hand, you are crazy in love with a web-based feed reader, you can skip to the comments now and tell me what it is.)

Yes, back at the dawn of time, bookmarks were enough. Then came folders for bookmarks. Then I started blogging, so I started a blogroll, which mutated and expanded to two links pages, a more to read list and a more to read for web nerds list. The main advantage was that for the most part, I could read my sites from any computer. This worked in combination with tabbed browsing, and a bookmark folder on the toolbar called buffer.

What did I need buffer for? It was where I kept bookmarks (mostly of blogs) that I was interested enough in to follow for a little while, and consider adding to one of my links pages. When I added a site to one of the page, I deleted it from the buffer file.

Then I started reading more RSS feeds than web sites. Soon, I was subscribed to nearly 200 feeds, because it was easy and new and I’m nuts. Every time I opened my feed reader, I’d have hundreds of new items. (They were piling up faster than my unread book stack, which previously I would have said moves, if not at the speed of light, and least and the speed of sound. Certainly at a speed that is significantly and unfortunately faster than page-turning.) I started using del.icio.us to bookmark things, because it let me assign multiple tags to keep track of why I was bookmarking things, and I was able to access what I tagged from anywhere. Throw in a couple of PubSub watches, and suddenly I was feeling behind — behind in reading things I needed to read, or even worse, wanted to read.

Part of the problem is that I haven’t found a feed reader that is web-based that I’m happy with. I’m using Shrook on my Powerbook and FeedDemon on my work PC, and there isn’t an easy way to keep those in sync. Thing is, I like how Shrook works, especially how fast it is, and that is making me not want to use a web service as a reader. Anybody have something they really love? I don’t mean just use, it works ok… I mean love. Love in that fascinating, Steve Krug wants to marry Amazon tabs kind of a way. Does such a beastie exist?

But back to the hundreds of unread items bugging me. Yes, bugging me, because I am that kind of obsessive person. Taking a look at what I was subscribed to, I realized there were sites where:

• I wanted/needed to read every new post as soon as practical
• I wanted to read every new post, but it didn’t matter when I read them
• I didn’t need/want to read every post, but I didn’t want to lose track of the site

So I weeded my feeds. Here’s my current system:

Feed-read the want/need to read sites as soon as practical. Don’t read PubSub watches as feeds, use the Firefox sidebar to access, and tag the good stuff with delicious. Put new-to-me sites in the buffer folder and think about subscribing to them instead of subbing immediately. Delete the feeds for sites I just don’t want to lose track of, and but them in a new toolbar bookmark folder called occasional. Yes, the occasional folder — a stroke of demented genius.

I hope this works well until the holy grail is launched — lightning-fast web-based feed reader that works on Safari or Camino and Firefox and can remember what I’ve read not just which browser I read it with, makes it easy to subscribe to feeds, makes it easy to mark and save items for later, has the ability to make things private or public, exports data easily in OPML in case I change my mind/want to take my data with me, lets me customize the display somewhat (at least things like column widths), doesn’t make me look at advertising, doesn’t default to a bunch of unecessary “starter” feeds, and doesn’t cost much.

An info-geek can dream. And tweak the system.