Blog homeI subscribe to about 30 RSS feeds covering a range of subjects.
I try to choose one or two feeds for each subject that I am interested in - rather than every single feed that exists in that subject - as if a piece of news is worth covering - it will be covered by that “source” anyway. I also prefer to subscribe to news from news sources and just tend to subscribe to bloggers who undertake analysis or who are discussing their own experiences. I haven’t got time for anything else.
I use NetVibes - which is a great for web based feed reading.
Anyway, I have come up with an idea for a new RSS feed reading feature that would help me manage the way I work….
Looking at how I read feeds I tend to read a post not long after it is published because I open my Netvibes a few times a day. I have no real need to be so “quick” to read breaking stories - but I expect it is just a form of modern procrastination when I really ought to be doing something else.
However this causes two problems that could be addressed with technology:
- Too much interruption during the day (my fault)
- If I read a story too soon after it has been published - on some high trafficked sites - there are often not that many comments. If I read the same post a couple of days later, often comments are as interesting as the original post. Therefore occasionally I find myself going back to a site a couple more times just for the comments…. which is a bit of a waste of time
So here is a solution
Create an RSS feed reading feature that introduces artificial lag into my feed reading. This would work two ways:
- I could make it only send new feeds at 1 pm (for lunch reading), 5pm (for evening reading) - and not show them in my reader before those times
- It could “lag” any feeds from sites that I have defined as having lots of comments - until perhaps + 24 hours
In essence you would provide an external feed address into this tool - which would, on a regular basis, capture that feed and then distribute it as a new feed (just like FeedBurner). Any existing feed reader could subscribe to the new feed (plus lag)…..
Of course, I could just stop checking my feeds so often….. but I prefer a solution that doesn’t rely on my mental ability to deny myself temptations.
I have written an RSS tool before (that was reviewed favourably on TechCrunch) however I wouldn’t be writing about how I need to save time reading RSS if I had enough time to create a new RSS web based tool!
On the Feature | Product | Company scale….. this would make a rather neat feature to an existing feed reader - or a small standalone tool monetised through in RSS advertising.
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