ivantohelpyou

Until today, I have been an Internet surfer.

Yes, I knew there were ways to streamline the experience, so that instead of hopping from site to site I could simply run one program that subscribes to RSS feeds from multiple sites, aggregating all of your desired content in one spot. And I've even tried several of those programs, in the following categories:

• E-mail client: Outlook 2007 includes built-in support for RSS feeds, and by default subscribes you to four Microsoft feeds. I added a couple additional feeds, which means that as these feeds are updated, I get extra mail. This has contributed to the large size of my Outlook database. Furthermore, having to check the feeds slows down the process of fetching and retrieving mail every 10 minutes or whenever I obsessively click the "Send/Receive" button waiting for incoming. This feature is only worthwhile for your top feeds, and only if you're positive you want to save the content on your own PC.
• Separate application: I remember downloading some program or another on the Mac to read RSS feeds. It worked fine, but it was another application to have to download, install, upgrade and oh yes, remember to launch. More often than not, I'd just go directly to the sites that I had fed into the feed reader. Plus, you couldn't take it with you.
  
• Firefox plug-in: A little easier to maintain, and it's in the browser. But like the application approach, it's not exactly portable.
  
• Website: I used Bloglines a few years ago, but it didn't exactly impress me from the user interface perspective. I tried it again this month and it didn't really look any different.
  

Today, after reading Robert Scoble mention his 577 feeds that he monitors through Google Reader, I figured I'd give the Website approach another try. After all, it's Google. Google Reader.

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading blogs.

Setup was fairly easy, and I've outlined the how-to below. It shouldn't take you more than five minutes. I would say that it'll save you time every day, but what's probably going to happen is that you're going to end up reading more than you'd ever thought possible.

1. Open a Google Reader account.
2. Find an OPML file that appeals to you. For example, you can download the "top 100" file from share.opml.org. For best results, right-click (Mac users, shift-click) on the XML button, and save the file to your hard drive, e.g. "top100.xml".
3. From Google Reader, go to Settings >> Import/Export.
4. Select the OPML.xml file you downloaded in step 2.
5. Press the "Upload" button.
   
6. All of the feeds in the OPML file will be loaded into Reader. At this point, you can start reading. However, I recommend the following additional steps, which will allow you to keep things organized if you load more than one OPML file into a single account.
   
7. Go to Settings. You'll see all of the subscriptions you've just loaded.
   
8. Now, you're going to create a new "tag" to contain all of the feeds in the OPML file. Pick any of the new subscriptions, and then use the "Change folders" menu to create a new folder, e.g. "Top100".
9. Select the "Unassigned" subscriptions.
   
10. In the "More actions..." dropdown menu, find your new tag. Assign it to the "Unassigned" subscriptions.
11. Go to step 2, repeat as necessary.
    

Using OPML files from Alexandra Samuel's blog, OPML.org and Startupping, plus a bunch of my own favorites, I quickly amassed over 300 subscriptions. (Soon, I'll post the official ivantohelpyou OPML file. Watch this space.)

Now, I can either hop from one source to the next, or just lie back and let the endless scroll of the Internet unfold before my eyes.

I no longer surf. Now, the Internet surfs me.

Labels: blogging, Web 2.0