Call Me Converted

For the past three years I have been blogging actively but not using a feedreader actively. Sure I've used plenty of feedreaders. I've basically tried them all. I've been regularly subscribing to feeds in newsgator online and bloglines, largely to database blogs I like. I keep a top ten list of blogs in MyYahoo. And I get all my podcasts via feeds in iTunes. And I subscribe to delicious feeds in MyYahoo (text) and iTunes (audio and video).

But as I've blogged numerous times, I have never really used a feedreader the way most people do. I prefer to read the posts directly on the blog. I want to see the youtube videos that don't come through on most feedreaders, the sidebar bling, etc.

But I've decided that I really need to be more organized about my blogreading habits and with the arrival of a new laptop (my macbook pro), and the prodding of Brad Feld, Charlie O'Donnell, and Al Warms, I've taken the plunge. The comment that convinced me was from Al, who said he loves to read blogs offline on planes in his newsreader. That's compelling to me.

I am using NetNewsWire and I've imported the opml files of all the various readers I've used over the years. Then I pruned the list of blogs down to the 87 (no magic number there, just what I ended up with) feeds. I've organized them into seven categories:

Music
NYC
Personal/Friends
Political/Opinion
Stocks/Investing
Union Square Ventures & Alums
VC/Tech

And I've taken the final, but important, step of using NetNewsWire's synching feature (with Newsgator Online) to publish my real blogroll. The list of blogs you see on the lower right sidebar is the exact list in my NetNewsWire reader.

When I add a blog to NetNewsWire, it will end up on the blogroll. I'd really like to organize the blogs/feeds by my seven categories, but I don't know how to do that in Newsgator yet. When/if I figure that out, you'll see the categories appear on my blogroll.

I don't intend to stop reading blogs the way I've been reading them for the past three years (mostly by following links), but I do plan to check in on all 87 (or more) blogs in my reader at least once a week. I think that's how most people do it and you can now call me converted.

Comments

[Jimmie]

I used to be the same way - until I found google reader (google.com/reader). It's the best solution I've found for reading your feeds anywhere and keeping it all in sync no matter where you're viewing from. No more having to worry about reading the same story twice. Also it has an opml import feature that allows you to import your current list. Happy rssing.

[Rex Hammock]

I've used NetNewsWire for a couple of years -- exactly the way you describe. I have spoken with many bloggers who don't use newsreaders (I'm always perplexed and wonder how they can keep up.)

[daryn]

I used NetNewsWire in the past, but switched to Bloglines over a year ago, and have been pretty happy with it.

This was primarily due to the fact that I use several machines, and I prefer the hosted application model to installed software.

Sure, I use a dedicated email program, but as much I read my feeds, I haven't seen the need for a dedicated feed reader.

Plus, similar to yourself, I basically use bloglines to scan through my blogroll quickly (their keyboard shortcuts are really convenient) and then I click through to the actually post if something catches my eye.

[David Cancel]

Newshutch.com is the best newsreader I've used, by far. I've used Bloglines, many open source and closed source readers and for the 6mos I was hooked on NetNewsWire.

NetNewsWire is a great rich client but it felt too overwhelming to keep up w/ all my feeds (100+?) using it. I missed the ability to read all the posts from a single feed with one click that I had with Bloglines. The final straw was the newsgator web-based client, major suckage. It was almost perfect before they removed the ability to sync with your bloglines account in favor of the newsgator service.

These days Newshutch is my favorite, much better than the alien feel of Google's NewsReader. It makes reading lots of feeds very easy, so much so, that I've started expanding my feed list.

[ben barren]

thats very kewl.im envious - typing away on non intel ibook and imac 20 ! bb

[Kevin C. Tofel]

My personal fave is Onfolio, which was bought by Microsoft and integrated into the Windows Live Toolbar. I have yet to see a reader that provides the functionality that Onfolio does in its newspaper view. Unfortunately, since I use multiple devices daily, I need a solution that synchronizes and Onfolio doesn't do that yet. NewsGator Online is where I ended up for simplicity and accessibility. It's also easy to organize feeds by category which help make my blogging research more efficient. Oh, and it's free.

[howard lindzon]

Funny - tradermike finally convinced me to do the same this week. I am not converted but am close

[bretto]

I started with newsgator. Nice hierarchal layout. Which proceeded to become a organizing problem as number of subscriptions increased.

Switched to Rojo. Like its tagging capability not on other.

Hmmm not sure if I'm ready to convert again, but I'll try anything once... or twice if I really like it.

[Ben Casnocha]

I organize my feeds in NetNewsWire by priority: high priority, medium priority, and low priority. I found this is more effective than by *category* of blogs (e.g. family, VC, etc).

[Mark]

Organizing by priority is an interesting concept. I use a fairly structured categorization for my feeds, but find myself using the Attention tools built into FeedDemon more and more. Which reminds me of the best feature in NewsGator products: the automatic syncing between NetNewsWire, NewsGator Online, and FeedDemon. No one else even comes close to that level of comprehensive coverage across platforms.

And for anyone else who just spent 20 minutes trying to find the blogroll feature at NewsGator, it's under My Settings > Locations, then choose which location you want to use.

[Jim Parker]

With NewsGator (with Premium Online version $20/yr), you can set up multiple locations with unique OPML urls.
Click "my settings" then the "edit locations" tab. At the bottom of the page, create your locations to match you categories. Then you can click "feeds" for each location and check off the actual feeds you want or don't want for that location.
This will leave you an OPML feed for each of your categories - which you could add to your side as you please.
Hope this helps ;-)

[Jeff Schuler]

I'd really like to see NewsGator show categories in blogroll exporting too, (mine is virtually unusable.)

I made this request on the NewsGator Online forum a few months ago. They've apparently added the request to their feature request database, but I've heard nothing further.

I suggest that -- and would appreciate if -- you seconded that motion by adding your voice there, to bump the thread up again and show some more support for the feature!

[Marco Raaphorst]

Yes, google reader (google.com/reader) is what I recommend too. Mainly because it's great to add tags, favorites, has a build in mp3-player and it's sequential way of showing the news instead of grouping everything together based on website/feed.

[everysandwich]

I knew it was time to find another solution when I needed an aggregator for my aggregators. So many flavors. Here's another for the mix -- reblog from eyebeam. I use it just for aggreating, but it does much more, including republishing.

[pria]

I use blogarithm as I love to have blogs in categories. They do have blogmail, where they email you a list of blogs updated and its easy to check from email itself.

[Varun Mathur]

A few months ago, I got sick and tired of most of the readers out there. So, I am building something much more "user-friendly" and am looking forward to using it to better manage my online reading, and have fun doing it. I'll let you know when it launches.

[JEROGatch]

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