A few weeks ago I gave up on reading RSS feeds through MyYahoo and started using Bloglines and I can’t tell you how much it has helped me.  The change coincided with a ramp-up for me in regards to work so I just don’t have any free time to keep up with reading.  If I were still using MyYahoo I’d be stuck because the RSS feeds are transient; the headlines appear until  they are replaced by the newest posts for that particular feed.  With Bloglines I can save feeds that look interesting and read them later.  Sounds simple, but it is an incredibly valuable tool and when I have the time I’m going to start looking into other tools that might have a similar positive impact on my information consumption.

In looking at my Bloglines feed page I’ve noticed a curious pattern; there are certain blogs (feeds) I check every day and others I let go for a while and within the blogs I read every day there are those that I tend to save lots of stories from and others that, while valuable, provide me with nothing I want to reference later.  Here are some of the blogs I read regularly and the number of stories I’ve saved over the last couple of weeks:

• Ed Cone – 1 saved story
• Bookofjoe – 13 saved stories
• BoingBoing – 16 saved stories
• Reveries – 3 saved stories
• Vie de Malchance – 1 saved story
• Hogg’s Blog – 1 saved story

When I think about it I guess it makes sense.  BoingBoing and bookofjoe are both interesting compilations that to me are a unique blend of magazine and catalog, while the others I read more like newspapers.  I probably find just as much of interest on Ed Cone, Vie de Malchance, Hogg’s, etc. but it isn’t the kind of information I save for later use.  On the other hand Boing Boing and bookofjoe always have features about really cool trinkets and doodads that I tell myself I’ll use some day.  Probably not, but it’s the digital equivalent of ripping pages out of magazines/catalogs and stuffing them in a drawer.

BTW, here’s a not-comprehensive list of the things I found valuable enough to save:

• Hyperdog Ultra-Long Distance Wrist-Mounted Tennis Ball Launcher (bookofjoe)
• Michelangelo Drawings: Closer to the Master (bookofjoe)
• Johnny Jolter Power Plunger (bookofjoe; I am, after all, The Turd Man of Alcatraz)
• Forearm Forklift (bookofjoe)
• NewspaperArchive.com (bookofjoe)
• Woophy.com – Mapping the world one photographer at a time (bookofjoe)
• Smithsonian becomes Showtime’s exclusive first-refusal archive (BoingBoing)
• Blooker (blog-book) prize winners announced (BoingBoing)
• MP3s from "Economics of Open Content" conference (BoingBoing)
• Piss-controlled urinal-based video games (BoingBoing)
• Ranking Dangers (Vie de Malchance)
• The Freemium Business Model (AVC)
• How to Murder a Complete Stranger and Get Away With It (Freakonomics)

Another info-management tool I’m trying to use more is my "social bookmark" page at del.icio.us.  Basically it lets me bookmark and "tag" any pages I come across with keywords that mean something to me.  There’s a little box on the right hand side of my blog that shows my most recent del.icio.us tags but if you want to browse the whole thing you can do it here.

This whole information-overload-management thing is becoming kind of a pain in the ass but I’m hoping to figure out a way to use these tools to organize it all so it is more a fancy feast and less a gluttonous mess.