How to Hack RSS to Reduce Information Overload

There seems to be two forms of 'news' that unfortunately rss readers try to do both of them. The first is feeds from sites that update 20+ times a day and the second is that blog that updates once every three months. The first is just there to read if you have the free time while the second you always want to read every single one. You can create two wildly different user interface optimized for the two modes rather than what we have today which is the best of neither.

In my opinion, RSS is "good" for one thing only, which is aggregating a bunch of rarely-updating blogs into a single location to check.<p>Following something like techcrunch.com in an RSS reader – let alone with unread counts – just seems like madness to me. I realize some people do it, though.<p>(Incidentally, this is precisely the problem my startup is trying to solve. You plug in your RSS feeds and it will assemble a personal "hacker news" of things you should be reading. iPad-only for now, though: <a href="http://zite.com" rel="nofollow">http://zite.com</a>)

I saw a similar post a few days ago but specifically for developers. Applying Service Oriented Design To Yourself: Information Stream Management: <a href="http://blog.darkhax.com/2011/03/22/applying-service-oriented-design-to-yourself-information-stream-management" rel="nofollow">http://blog.darkhax.com/2011/03/22/applying-service-oriented...</a>

I also built this tool to delay RSS feeds until after I finish work, you should check it out - <a href="http://rssafter5.appspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://rssafter5.appspot.com</a>

For me, the biggest improvement in information overload has been simply unsubscribing from any blog that updates more than two or three times a day (Marco.org, keep; TechCrunch, remove).<p>Instead, I subscribe to their Twitter feed and any story important enough that I missed seems to find its way to me in other ways (e.g., here on HN).

I listen to my RSS feeds via FeedSpeak for Android : <a href="http://feedspeak.tk" rel="nofollow">http://feedspeak.tk</a>