Confessions of a born-again RSS subscriber
I have been following J. Phil and Corvida on their quest to throttle the RSS feeder fire-hose a bit. 
I’d participate but I’m still starting from scratch: I’ve only been using an RSS reader for less than a month now and haven’t built my subscriptions up past 70 feeds yet.
That I’m not an RSS fiend would probably surprise some people I know. In general, I’m the source that a lot of my friends depend on to keep track of new technology and services on the web and I do a pretty good job, despite the fact that until recently I haven’t used a feed reader for more than 4 years.
How can any self-proclaimed geek and technophile possibly not be chained to a feed reader, you say? By burning myself out so well early on that I didn’t even have a partial interest in trying again. Back in 2004 I found Bloglines.com. It was exciting, cool, shiny, hip and kept me “in the know”. 
I subscribed to around 1K feeds within a few weeks in my enthusiasm. After a couple of months checking my feeds turned from fun to a major chore. Categorizing and labeling every feed and post to keep things organized (OCD, I know), “clearing” out each folder only to notice 10 more entries instantly pop up: I finally realized that it was completely stressing me out and quit the whole thing cold-turkey. I had associated the whole concept of RSS with that horrible overwhelming feeling and had no desire to use another reader again.
I couldn’t resist RSS entirely, though, and during my reader hiatus I subscribed to about 10 feeds (off and on) through an RSS to email service called R|Mail, which is now in the deadpool. When I realized it had died, I started using SimplyHeadlines.com instead, a service that emails you a daily summary of the feeds you subscribe to with it. The comforting bite-sized chunks of information, easily scannable in a few minutes a day made me feel like I was still informed, but, as a geek, I’ve always been a bit embarrassed that I didn’t use a reader.
Toluu is what got me interested in readers again. Since I signed up I have been discovering interesting new sites by browsing what other people are subscribing to. I like the idea of having a “home” for my list of feeds (OPML) as well. I started out importing my feeds from SimplyHeadlines, but the Toluu bookmarklet for GoogleReader kept calling me. I was pretty apprehensive when I first imported my OPML into GoogleReader but so far it’s been a good experience. To keep from getting bogged down again I force myself to ignore the folders and tagging and just scroll through new items. Starring things to come back to and sharing things I want to discuss on FriendFeed is quick and painless. GoogleReader is actually working well for me and that’s a relief. I feel some of my geek cred is now restored. I’ve dipped my toes back into the RSS ocean and I haven’t drowned yet. I’m not sure I will let myself subscribe to more than 100 feeds though: I’m still afraid of the overload.
So since I can’t really participate in the RSS Reset project, I thought I would at least list some of the feeds that I am subscribed to and am enjoying now:
Favorites for Web 2.0:
Favorites for Photoshop / Graphic Design:
Favorites for Web Development:
Favorite for Life:
Favorites for lolz and hmmms:
* always subscribed to these even during my reader-less days.
I’m glad that Toluu pushed me back over to the not-quite-as-dark-as-I-remember-it side! I’m looking forward to seeing what gems J. Phil and Corvida unearth in their experiment. If anyone has any suggestions for things I might like in the categories above, please leave me a comment!
