So don’t get me wrong…I LOVE Bloglines probably more than any other read/write Web tool out there. Frankly, I’m not sure everyone should be a blogger. But I am sure everyone should use an aggregator. Everyone. And to me, Bloglines is hands down the most convenient.
But a few months ago they added this new “Keep New” feature where if there is a post you want to get back to at some point you can click the box and it will stay in the list until you, theoretically at least, come back at a later time and unclick it. Problem is I’m having a little difficulty with the second half of that equation. So now, before I even start reading what’s come in just the EdBlogger part of my subscriptions, I have 124 messages that are “Keeping New,” just kinda waiting there for me to do something with. And it’s unnerving me to some extent, accentuating this feeling that I have that I’ll never know it or read it all.
What characterizes a “Keep New” post, you ask? (Like someone is really asking…) Well, usually it’s something I read when I might not have enough time to fully digest what it’s about and I think I might want to blog about it later, or it’s something I want to try out but it doesn’t especially look like a resource I could Furl. (Ironically, the oldest “Kept New” post I have is Lilia’s “Time in blogging: catching a moment to write” from September 27. Coincidence???) Regardless, I think I’m going to have to resolve NOT to keep things new, to figure out something to do with whatever piques my interest. But what?
On a side note, my aggregator reading has now totally evolved into something akin to throwing darts. I cannot get my little Bloglines notifier to say anything under 1,000 posts waiting to be read, and so I just go in a randomly click off a few of the bigger culprits just to get the number down. What I should do is just admit that, especially this time of year, there’s no way I can do 150 subscriptions justice. But who (or what) do I delete? Oh, the humanity!
On second thought, maybe some people shouldn’t have an aggregator either…
Will, try the “Clip This” link – you can create folders (like “Cool Tools” or “Think about this”) and plop the posts into them. That way the new post will be just that!
There are some blogs that I read every time there’s a new post and I want to be notified (NSBA’s Blog for example) and others that I know will always have new posts and I don’t want to be notified about (Engadget and Gizmodo). In Bloglines, you can set certain blogs to not be tracked by the notifier. So I only have about 20 blogs on the notifier, and 80 that aren’t. One other thing. I personally furl articles that I might want to come back to and blog about. So far, that’s the only thing I use furl for (I use del.icio.us for bookmarking). Just a couple thoughts for you!
I like the idea about “Clip this” – I’ve got a Furl account – and I use iKeepbookmarks as an online bookmark service, but seem to end up with too many places to save things … so they still never get read.
This article so hit home!
The same thing happens to me (I’ve kept new Lilia’s post too!) regularly–del.icio.us is proving to be a pretty good solution, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and “Mark All Read”…
cgb
This is such an accurate description of the problem I have with Bloglines “Keep New” feature that I added it to my “Keep New”.