Happy new year and welcome to 2011. You made it through the holidays. Many of you today will ponder the changes you plan to make this year. Some may involve technology. Jenna Wortham at The Times has a good one.
One of my technology New Year’s resolutions is to simplify my systems. Oddly enough, for me at least, this marks a return to an old standby: reading feeds.
Now some of you never stopped using an RSS reader. But as unread counts piled up and Twitter and Facebook dominate the scene, I sense many moved on. I did last year. I found it slow compared to the real-time stream.
I like to stay flexible, however. So, to change it up a bit, at the end of last year I decided to revisit using Google Reader in conjunction with Reeder, which now has a great desktop version. I haven’t look back. Here’s what I had missed …
- My “Alexandria” – Google Reader acts like a great virtual library. Months from now I can go back and find something I read, scanned or missed.
- Focused consumption – I am actually immersed in reading as opposed to watching for/managing replies, DMs or the next tweets that roll in.
- Full content – Rather than just scan headlines as I do on Twitter, in my reader I actually can skim more of the content – provided it’s a blog. (An observation: people write better leads than 140 character headlines.)
And here’s how this benefits me and the circles I serve (co-workers, clients and you):
- The system gets smarter – The more I use Google Reader, the more I start adding feeds. This grows the database and its value. (Hint: to manage this, set up folders and hide unread counts.)
- I get smarter – I am get exposed to new thinking more often because I read more slowly and with greater depth
- “Better” tweeting – This means we get smarter. I find gems others haven’t spotted yet and share them. This means I retweet less and we hang in the “junto)” more.
None of this, by the way, means less time on Twitter. I just now use it a bit differently.
How about you? What’s your technology resolution this year? Is a return to long reading a trend that’s coming back into vogue? It might be. Sites like Give Me Something to Read and Longreads are starting to attract more buzz. Some say they will read more books next year. I’m eager to hear your thoughts.
(I will share my other tech resolution later this coming week.)
Image credit: Smoking Apples
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