Google Reader is painful and lame

Sometimes when I have tasks to organise in my head I waste time online. Menial tasks occupy the higher brain and … boring neuroscience, you don’t want to hear.

So I came upon a very awesome webcomic called Geek’n'poke, read a few issues and decided to bookmark it for later consumption.

In modern days however this is done by adding its RSS feed to Google Reader obviously.

And suddenly a pain came over me. It engulfed my whole being. Crushed my insides. Made my brain as if in a vice. My spider senses were tingling. My skin crawling with fear. It was not unlike somebody suddenly thwapping you on the side of your head when you least expect it.

That’s right, it was the “Oh fuck, why the hell am I adding another feed!? What’s wrong with me” moment.

You’ve had that before haven’t you? Chances are you’re exactly like me and are subscribed to at least a hundred feeds, which swamp you with copious amounts of data you can’t possibly get through every day. Quite unbearable really. Sometimes I’ll come to zero during breakfast and then have another 200 items waiting for me by lunchtime.

the “Oh fuck, why the hell am I adding another feed!? What’s wrong with me” moment

But I can’t just bloody give them up! Oh no, my inner scavenger prevents that. What if! What if I miss something important? What if I’m not on board for that three day meme?

Surely the world would end!

Of course it wouldn’t, but this is generally how the human mind works, we simply cannot bear the thought of closing doors. Even when keeping them open costs us an insane amount of resources and time, we still don’t want to close them. You never know, maybe you’ll want to get back to it … just like you always kept a finger at the last point in a make-your-own-story book. Admit it, you did.

What’s needed is a solution that enables us to both keep adding new and new things to our reading list, but still get through it all.

The answer is value sorting – items sorted not by time, but by their value.

“AHA! Sort by magic!” I hear you say.

True, google reader does offer such a thing as popularity sorting. But that’s a whole different beast than value sorting.

Now I’m not certain about you, but I know that Big Brother was/is a very popular thing and I still don’t want to hear the first thing about it. I don’t care what it is, I don’t care when it’s on and I certainly don’t care who the “stars” are.

Obviously not everybody is going to appreciate everything that is popular. People have niche interests, people’s interests change – several times a day even! No no, sorting by popularity just isn’t going to work if we want to solve this problem.

Value sorting, that’s the key.

When you’re having breakfast you probably would prefer reading a few funny comics to start your on a positive foot, than read about the insane amount of toxins in some chinese brand of food. But when you’re at work, o ho!, totally different story! Now you need something much heavier than a funny lolcat.

Readers of any content stream need to learn how to sorty by value, the user’s value. Then maybe adding a feed won’t be so painful.

PS: my6sense seems to be the only step in the right direction at this point in time, but for some stupid reason it only works on iPhones …

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This entry was written by swizec, posted on March 31, 2010 at 12:41 am, filed under Information overload and tagged Big Brother, Clients, feedreader, Google Reader, Meme, RSS, Webcomic, WWW. Bookmark the permalink.
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