Trimming in Public is a series where I go through my list of 293 RSS feeds, 10 feeds at a time, give some detail as to why I subscribed to a particular feed, and then decide whether or not to keep on consuming that feed. In Episode 1 I explained what RSS is and how to use it, please read that if you need a refresher on why RSS is awesome and why you should be using it if you take reading news on the internet seriously. The prefix to Trimming in Public is “Becoming a better blogger, reader and helping me take out the trash.” For the bloggers out there who read IntoMobile, I hope you get a better idea of what I do to keep on top of the news. For the readers who read IntoMobile, I know that this site isn’t the only mobile focused technology publication on the internet, and by sharing which sites I read I’m hoping that you’ll keep on coming back here. Taking out the trash has an obvious explanation, I can’t keep up with my RSS feeds and need to trim my list. For those who want to download my complete list of 293 RSS feeds, feel free to grab my OPML file.
Check out Episode 10 after the jump, and all episodes by clicking on the Trimming in Public tag:
- Inside the Box: Another Lenovo blog I subscribe to. Inside the Box, if I had to compare it to anything, would be most similar to Nokia Conversations. Can’t emphasize how large of a ThinkPad nerd I am. My favorite post has to be the owl fan. Who in their right mind would go to such lengths to detail the innovation achieved by mimicking nature when designing fan blades to maximize air flow and reduce noise? Decision: As long as ThinkPads stay square black boxes, I’ll be reading this blog.
- Internet Evolution: Where is the future of the internet going? I want to know. Part of wanting to know, is reading what other people predict. Internet Evolution has two problems: 1) They spit out a partial RSS feed and 2) They talk more about what is happening today, than where they think the internet is heading. I know what is happening today. I’m an alpha-beta-testing-whore for my generation. Instead of writing about what’s happening on the internet, I simply use the tools that at some point will drive the future of the internet. Best way to learn. I used to learn a lot from this blog back when it started, now … not so much. Decision: Garbage.
- Internet Tablet Talk: Curious to know what’s happening with Nokia’s Internet Tablets? Read this blog. Do I care about Nokia’s Internet Tablets? No. Today you’re much better off buying an iPod Touch than an Internet Tablet that has a large 4.13 inch screen that doesn’t quite slide in your pocket with the greatest of ease. Decision: Unsubscribe.
- IntoMobile: When it’s my turn to blog, I need to see what my team wrote so I don’t write a duplicate post. Our search engine, no offense to our technology team, but it blows chunks. I get far better results using Google Reader’s search engine. Decision: Crucial to my job.
- Jaiku | Latest from christinad: I used to be a huge, HUGE, Jaiku addict. After Google purchased the service, it died a slow and tragic death. I’m on Twitter now, but it just isn’t the same. Apparently I really cared enough about a user called christianad to subscribe to their Jaiku posts. I don’t even know who this person is today. Update: christinad is my friend’s wife. I always used to tease him about the things she said about him. Good times. Decision: Dead service, dead feed, good bye.
- Jan Chipchase – Future Perfect: Jan works for Nokia as an anthropologist. He isn’t an arm chair anthropologist either, creating surveys and then asking a team to hand them out. When he goes to research a new territory, culture or social class, he sleeps, eats, and works with people to get a most excellent idea of what it’s like to live in their shoes. His blog posts make me question the assumptions I’ve already made about the reality around me, and expose me to new lands and cultures that I may not have been familiar with before. He used to live in Tokyo, now he is in Los Angeles I believe. Either way, the man is always traveling somewhere. I saw him in the Nokia cafeteria one day, eating with his team, and I was too timid to approach him and say hello. I regret that. Now that I no longer work there, I don’t know if that opportunity will ever present itself again. This article about Jan in the New York Times is a must read. Decision: Love his work.
- Jaymo’s World: Yet another Nokia blog that started, and died. Decision: Unsubscribe.
- Jeremiah’s Shared Links in Friend Feed: This is a custom Yahoo! Pipe that I built. Yahoo! Pipes, for those of you who have never heard of the service, is a way to chop up an RSS feed into something that only spits out the data you want. Jeremiah is an analyst at Forrester, and thus maintains a lot of relationships with his clients using various social media tools. I could care less about his personal life, and who he talks to, but at some point I used to care about the links he shared. I said this in a previous episode, but I have a strong ethos for sharing. That’s what makes the internet awesome, the fact that you can point someone to something and then engage in a conversation around that social object to quote Jyri Engeström. The pipe I created is rather simple, input Jeremiah’s Friend Feed RSS, filter through the results that only have the word “http://”, and now I only see the links he has shared. Useful, but now I no longer care about the groundswell, social media, or any of the other things that old companies need to learn about, yet new companies are doing right out of the gate because that’s the only way they know how to operate properly. Decision: Unsubscribe.
- John Forsyth’s weblog: Symbian employee who used to blog actively, and then he stopped a year ago. If he writes something important, I’m sure David Wood will write about it, or the Symbian Foundation blog. Decision: Unsubscribe.
- John Tokash’s Blog: I’m scrolling through the content in this blog, and trying really hard to remember why I subscribed to it in the first place, but nothing is causing a spark. Decision: Unsubscribe.
Down to 233.
10 episodes = I’ve combed through 100 RSS feeds, so 293 – 233 = 60 feeds that have been chopped. If I maintain this current level of trimming, I’ll have only 118 RSS feeds by the end of this series. Wow.