Thing 4(b): Feed demon

Google Reader is another tool that I’d never used until this week and which I’m already wondering how I managed without.

Setting it up was fairly easy. At home, running Firefox, it worked like a dream. At work, using Chrome, I hit a bit of an obstacle, as hitting the feed button on web pages seems not to connect to Google Reader but instead returns screeds of XML data. (I gather this is more likely to be Chrome’s fault than mine and is probably fixable using some sort of workaround or extension; but it is slightly vexing that Google’s browser doesn’t work smoothly with Google’s feed reader.)

Anyway, as long as I’m using Firefox I now have numerous feeds set up and am finding it mightily useful, not to say indispensable. I did subscribe to the full feed of all cpd23 blogs but found the constant influx of new, unread material slightly too much, so I deleted that; now I’m picking up selected blogs and websites as I come across them. I am staying on top of my feeds chiefly by skim reading rather than studying each new item in-depth, and “starring” posts that I particularly enjoy or may want to refer back to in future.

I know the problem of information overload is a perennial concern, and I can’t be sure that I won’t fall disastrously behind on my reading – in fact, I’m almost certain I will. I’m kind of relying on the idea that the really important or interesting stuff will be re-blogged or retweeted so much that it becomes almost impossible to miss.