Catching Up on My News Reader

So it will stop hassling me

I have my Google Reader organized well enough that I can step away from it for even for a few weeks and get back in the saddle quickly and catch up. Still, it does take some time to catch up on a few thousand well organized unread articles in one sitting.

As always, I share the best ones I read, but a few required some commentary on why I thought them meaningful. Here are some of those highlights:

I thought the New York Times fired that guy that was completely making up stuff, guess not.

This bear is me.

One shortcut to getting caught up was ditching out of my forums. As of this moment forums are dead to me. Attracting only the most mentally feeble and overbearing monomaniacal of sorts, a complete waste of time eliminated.

Words Mean Things

Why We Should Laugh at and Humiliate Others

If you write words like plz and lol on a frequent basis then you are an idiot. That's it. No real explanation is required.

Reader Smashes Surfing

Or is Reader the new Surfing?

I have been using Google Reader for a few months now. This follows several previous uneventful fruitless attempts to use a news reader of some sort for the past few years. It seems like GR is a perfect fit for me. Maybe I just wasn't ready for a reader before now. Either way, I think that in addition to GR itself a strategy that I've formulated on how I read seems as equally important. Here are my strategies for how I read using GR.


Create some tags.

The number and type of categories I used fluctuated quite a bit in the beginning. However, after consideration and trials of different techniques my current categories have remained stable for months. I'll identify each tag and its role in my reading proclivities.

I've decided that there are nine large content categories in my world. For each of these categories I make a GR tag (which looks like a folder). The categories are: Aggregators, Comics, Culture,Forum,Humor, News, Opinion, Sports and Technology.

Additionally, I have created some special GR tags which represent something different than previously listed content-oriented tags. They are Favorite, Unassigned and Unsubscribed.

Aggregators are high volume feeds that are essentially content-less but have potentially interesting links to content. I spend very little time keeping up with or spending time on aggregators, but every once in while they can be fun and nothing gets me in and out of such a fancy quicker than a GR tag that groups them up for me. Aggregators were a wonderful way to get a jump on finding content when starting out using a reader, but in the end they have a low signal to noise ratio compared to an existing rich set of refined subscriptions.

Comics feeds are something I'm always looking to grow. Comics are the only thing I miss in the whole death throw of the the newspaper business. I never fall more than a day or two behind on my Comics.

Culture feeds are somewhat of a catch-all for me because they represent interesting content that is somewhat difficult for me categorize. Generally, this is how I tag my creative art and writing related feeds. I might catch up on Culture monthly. Mostly I despise the artsy crowd, even as I pine to join them.


Forum feeds represent somewhat of a dying and perhaps soon to die need for me. I am down to participating on a single forum. The roundabout blog reading, commenting and trackback dynamic actually suits me better than forums. Forums, especially the technical ones, are overwhelmed with illiterate and lazy posters these days - so meaningful forum participants have become nearly extinct.


Humor feeds are generally satirical and the most coveted to me. Do not confuse Humor and Comics. I generally catch up on Humor on the weekends or during the work day if it is a particularly bad one.

News feeds are extremely high volume and do not receive much attention unless some event is on-going that I want the latest. So the News tag mostly sits there, poised for usefulness but isn't a daily or even weekly read for me. Whenever I read an article from any News outlet, I generally add them to GR. I do not otherwise actively add News feeds.

Opinion feeds are also extremely high volume and I try to cherry pick, usually by title, a few articles a week to read. The overwhelming majority of Opinion feed content is never read.

Sports feeds are high volume and generally unread unless I'm looking for a story on something.

Technology feeds are generally blogs by geeks that I read. However, sometimes they are corporate feeds from tech firms I have a vested interest in following. I definitely cherry pick by title on these and skip over 90% of posts.

If any of the feeds already tagged in one of the preceding content categories and is read often enough, I tag it additionally with Favorite. My first GR activity is to read my Favorites. These feeds should be considered recommended by me.

When I run across and subscribe to a new feed, I immediately tag it Unassigned. Eventually, I will review it and see if I want to categorize it with one of my content tags. If I decide it isn't worth reading I tag it Unsubscribed, so that if I accidentally subscribe to it again I'll know where it belongs. Either way, once I make a decision I remove the Unassigned tag. Unsubscribed feeds would be analogous to an anti-Favorite.

I don't think I'm maximizing on the variety of feeds out there, and I'm sure I'll expand my categories as needed as I grow with GR.


Subscribe to Feeds

GR comes with a handy link that I've added to my browser's toolbar, Subscribe. With it, I can simply click it when I'm on a blog and it starts the process of subscribing it to my GR.

I tend to subscribe to feeds linked from feeds I already read and enjoy. It's a process of an ever-growing network of subscriptions.

Here are feed tendencies that tend to attract me:

• Originality - topics not covered elsewhere are best
  
• Quality Writing - proper spelling, rich vocabulary and a complete lack of both SMS-speak and classic ESL
  
• Content - the content:link ratio needs to be extremely high
  
• Voice - I need to hear the writer's voice when I read
  
• Low Volume - A feed with 1-3 articles per week is ideal
  

There was a time when blogs where supposed to be about a diary of links on where you surfed and not much other content. For me that is repugnant. I don't really care where you surf. I care what you think.


Share Your Feeds

GR comes equipped with the ability to share what feeds you are subscribed as well as share individual articles in those feeds. For instance, earlier in this article I share my feed subscriptions by tag, using hyperlinks that GR gave me. For sharing articles, there's a handy "Share" button on any article you are reading. An example of sharing articles is on the right side bar of my blog, What I'm Reading Now. It is an auto magical feed presentation of particular articles I am interested sharing. It is all very easy and real-time to do this sort of sharing, which is a great design.

Sarcastic Olympics

Pick a book, any book

Event 1 - Find a book on Amazon and write the most entertaining, farcical and sarcastic review that you can. Find an obscure book without many reviews, so your words will stand out. There is no prize, save smug self-satisfaction knowing that you've contributed properly to the fall of civilization.

Here is an example that inspired me, to give you an idea - but do better. Post a comment here with your permalink that leads us to your handiwork. Go!

How To Post To A Technical Forum

Public Service Announcement

If you've been referred here...
Someone thinks you need a refresher...

If you've stumbled upon this another way...
Feel free to use this post as a reference in your forum in response to a poor post.

Be polite - your best behavior will be rewarded

• Stay on topics relevant to the forum.
• Disparaging the the basis of the technical forum is counterproductive and insulting (i.e., Oracle is so stupid, why can't Microsoft make an error for SQL Server that makes sense!)
• Don't insist on the nature of help you want (i.e., give me the answer, not links)
• Don't post the same issue in multiple forums. It shows a lack of respect to those that have chose to member themselves at one forum over another.

Don't be lazy - or face the wrath

• RTFM
• Search the Internet
• Search the forum archives
• Don't ever say...I searched the Internet and didn't find answer. Everyone will know your level of effort by the nature of your question.

Be interesting not pathetic - no one really cares how bad you are hurting

• Don't exhort responses by claiming desperation. Too often, posters use phrases such as "Urgent" or "ASAP" to imply that their time is very precious. Remember that everyone feels that way about their time. A well-written question will generally get faster and better responses than one that doesn't follow these guidelines.
• Concentrate on making your question interesting for the reader by explaining what you've tried and how you've failed

Be explicit - no one can read your minds

• Post product versions, tools used, actual code
• Use appropriate subject lines which summarize the subject of the problem. Subject lines which say "Help me" or "VB.NET" or "What to do?" only serve to give the first impression that you are too lazy to summarize your problem. Also, the Subject line and the body of your message are not intended to be a single sentence.

Be concise - show respect for your readers' time and bandwith

• Post only the most relevant code snippets, error messages - not entire programs or error dumps
• Explain with no more or less words than is necessary to get the job done.

Communicate clearly - tuck in your shirt and brush your teeth

• Check your spelling
• Use complete sentences
• Don't use SMS chat-speak (i.e., plz, ur, thx, h8, etc)
• Most professionals are extremely tolerant of language barrier-based grammar issues and intolerant of self-imposed illiteracy

Be patient - you are getting more than you paid for, act like it

• Insisting on quick replies to your issue only make people want you to suffer longer

Be grateful - don't take people for granted

• Experts in technical forums are taking out time from their busy schedules to help others in the community. If you get a helpful response from someone, you should always post the result, providing details of what you tried, and the measure of success you achieved. A simple "Thank you" can go a long way in establishing your credentials in the newsgroup.
• Even if none of the suggestions offered were able to solve your problem, you should still be grateful and thank people for their time.
• If you managed to solve the problem on your own, make sure to post how you solved it, so that people facing the same problem in future can search for and find the solution.

Thanks to Cerebrus for portions.