Nora Brown Design

RSS: A fresh start

The number of unread posts appears in red.

I’ve explained RSS feeds before, noting that they are a good way to keep track of your favorite news sites and blogs. However, there is a major drawback: it is easy to get “behind”, and let it become a source of dread instead of a convenience.

I use a free RSS reader called NetNewsWire, and, much like Mac’s Mail program, it displays the number of unread items in a little red circle in the icon dock. If you subscribe to even a modest number of frequently-updated feeds, and you go a few days without reading any, that number can quickly grow. You can start to feel like you’ll never catch up, and that’s true; you won’t. But the good news is, you don’t need to. Even though those sites might be publishing useful or fun information, it is not imperative that you read it right now. Thanks to Google, if you find you need any of that information, you’ll be able to go out on the web and find it.

Solutions for RSS Overload

So, after getting way behind on my RSS reading (up to about 800 unread posts), I finally took the plunge a couple of days ago, and marked everything as “Read”, even though it wasn’t. I then set NetNewsWire to open automatically whenever I turn on or log in to my computer, so I won’t go more than a day without remembering to look at my feeds. I’ve also divided my feeds into a few folders, one of which is called “Must Read”. If I’m in a hurry, I can simply focus on that folder.

Having started over at zero, now I have about 10 or 12 unread posts each morning, and a few throughout the day. Many of those I deem irrelevant and just skip; some short ones I may read right away; and something that seems useful but too long to read immediately, I mark as flagged to read later.

Do you have other methods for taming the RSS beast?