In NetNewsWire on my Mac (with the Toolbar Enabled), I can see 31 newsfeeds on my MacBook screen without the feeds list scrolling).
If I turn off the toolbar I can get 3 more. But I like the toolbar. I have turned off the Flagged Items and Clippings, because I’ve never used Clippings (I have Yojimbo if I need to “clip” something, and if something is interesting enough to get flagged, it too goes into Yojimbo, which also has flagging).
I also use the mobile interface to Newsgator.com several times a day. Some part of my brain feels like it needs to read these things because there might be something good in there.
What did I get rid of?
Wired and CNet
Wired, for example, has several RSS feeds which overlap but not one that has all of the articles (if I wrong, please let me know). I had signed up for 4-5 different ones which weren’t really all that different at times.
So I put them into one folder at least but still, I can get 4 copies of the same thing. And I know that when I look at my Wired folder and see 287 unread messages, but there’s still a mental drain. I dropped them all. I might go back and sign back up for one that has Lore Sjöberg’s alt text column in it (update: found it).
Mac news sites
I was following I think 10-15 of them which largely repeated the same news. I had signed up them, and tried to group them in the same folder so I could move through them quickly.
Today I went through each one and looked at the recent articles in each, and then picked one, one, to keep up with.
No I won’t tell you which one, it’s really not important. I will say this: it has useful information in its RSS feed, although it doesn’t have full text, which I wish it did. But having a snippet of the first X number of characters in each post is not useful unless you are extremely careful when writing posts.
Software Specific RSS Feeds
I unsubscribed to the feeds for a lot of individual software programs (i.e. Microsoft Office:Mac) because when something gets posted there, I’ll hear about it another way. Most software has “Check For Updates” built-in now, and I have VersionTracker Pro to catch the rest.
Stuff that was referenced once by another site I was reading at the time
This is a killer. I’m reading Ed’s page and Ed talks about something on Joe’s site, so I go and I sign up for Joe’s site.
Joe may not have been nearly as interesting as Ed, but I was now reading both. Now I’m back down to just Ed. Maybe.
Dead blogs
I was signed up for some which hadn’t had a new post in a year. Others which hadn’t posted anything useful in months.
Also: blogs I had once been excited about, but now, not so much. If I wasn’t excited about seeing a new post in the site, or if I looked back over the past 10-15 posts and didn’t see much that had made a lasting impression, out it went.
I knew him once…
Blogs of folks I knew but didn’t quite call friends. Things change. Life goes on.
Press Releases
If it’s actually interesting, I’ll hear about it another way.
Podcasts
Why weren’t those in iTunes?
Palm Related Websites
Palm is dead.
Yes, my Treo can do things my iPhone can’t, and does some things better than my iPhone, but I’m no longer actively using it except for the occasional Tetris game.
Websites about Websites
I haven’t written much (X)HTML/CSS by hand in a long time, the web standards debate no longer interests me, and not much written on any of these sites really matters much for the day to day living of my life. Off you go.
Web Forums
If I need something, I’ll go to the forum. If I post something on the forum, I’ll subscribe to that thread, usually via email.
How I did it
I exported my OPML list and imported it into Google Reader. That way if I want to go back and check again later I can, but I don’t have to. I also saved the OPML (dated and named “Pre Purge”) just in case.
Then I just went through and moved everything I wanted to keep into a folder called “AAA Keep” (to make it sort at the top by name) and dragged stuff there.
Whatever was outside that folder at the end was deleted.
What’s Left?
Sites that were at the top of my “Sort by Attention” in NetNewsWire.
Sites where I get excited seeing an unread message pop up (DF, HawkWings, CoolTools).
Sites where I am almost guaranteed to learn something or be interested in what is being said.
Sites that make me laugh (FSJ, Indexed).
Sites that tell me stuff I didn’t know that I needed to know but might need to know some day (MacFixit and MacOSXHints).
Sites that aggregate links of interest (DF Linked List, Waxy, OSNews) which have proven themselves interesting to me
A few things that may go away in the future but I had some kind of emotional attachment to now. I actually am only signed up for 27 feeds at the moment, so I can always come back later.
I may turn off the “Clippings” as I don’t use them. For that matter I may turn off Flagged Items, as I don’t use it either. If something is that interesting, I add it to Yojimbo.
Once I get to 31, something has to go for something else to get added.
Them’s the rules.
