I monitor an awful lot of RSS feeds, even after a recent trim-down of feeds I realized I just don’t read that often. One problem is subscribing a number of popular group blogs that have outrageous numbers of posts each day. Gawker’s Consumerist is one of those sites. You can mark all the posts as read and in the three seconds Google Reader takes to do so, 13 new posts pop up.
OK, it’s not that bad, but still. They average 550 posts a month (!) and it takes a while to even skim headlines. But a site I was just turned onto may help a bit.
AideRSS analyzes the popularity of posts in any given feed based on the number of comments on the post itself, links on del.icio.us, and other factors. Then, rather than subscribe to a Consumerist feed of 550 items a month, you can subscribe to a filtered “good posts” feed which cuts it down to 319 items a month, a “great posts” feed which drops it to 242, the “best posts” feed which drops it down to 138 a month, or a “top 20” feed. Great stuff!
While I wouldn’t use this on any personal blogs I read, it’s great for sites like Consumerist, Boing Boing, Waxy, or Kottke which have serve up a big chunk of content every day.
Oh, and don’t bother using it on the Ping.
Posted in Technology