Trimming in Public is a series where I go through my list of 293 RSS feeds, 10 RSS 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 5 after the jump, and all episodes by clicking on the Trimming in Public tag:
Before I begin Epsiode 5, I just want to highlight two people: Peter Kasting and Tomi Ahonen.
Peter let me know via the comments in Episode 4 that the Chromium Blog has indeed been kept up to date, and that the RSS problem was on my end. I checked, and sure enough, he was right. Between yesterday’s Episode and today’s, I also read an article titled “HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight?” that reminded me of the fact that Ian Hickson, the guy who is essentially writing the HTML 5 specification, is working for Google. I’ll subscribe to the Chromium Blog again, only because of Ian’s employer. It’s in Google’s best interest to make the browser industry adopt HTML 5 as quickly as possible and Chrome holds a key role in the shift to more advanced browsers.
Tomi contacted me and thanked me, several times, for the feedback. He admitted that it took him 45 minutes to read his latest blog post and that he is going to try and improve his style in future articles. That impressed me, and everyone deserves a second chance, so I’m going to resubscribe to Communities Dominate Brands.
There was a third person who contacted me, who took personal offense that I unsubscribed to their blog, and I’m not going to mention their name since I don’t want to turn this into a public fued, but I just want to say please don’t take it personally. Me not reading your blog does not negate any of the accomplishments you’ve achieved in your life time. I’m frankly jealous of all you’ve done and would be lucky to accomplish even half of the things in your CV.
With that, time for Episode 5:
- Dataspora: Data visualisation, the art of expressing large quantities of data, in a way that makes consuming said data an easier task to achieve, has always fascinated me. In some instances, data visualisation can even be an art form. If you haven’t heard of Edward Tufte, go read his Wikipedia entry right now since some call him the father of this field. We’re living in a world where we consume more and more data every year; I don’t have to tell you this. It will be the statisticians and designers that we idolize in the future, for they will be the people who highlight and present new knowledge out of an otherwise swamp of endless data. Dataspora is a blog that talks about data visualization and with the posts coming in at one, maybe twice a month, there is no reason to let go of this awesome resource. Decision: I like it.
- Dean Bubley’s Disruptive Wireless: Dean is an analyst who covers the mobile telecoms space. He’s a bright guy and often notices trends happening before anyone else does. Whether that be the USB dongle taking off, or subsidized netbooks, he was writing about those things weeks, or even months, before other people even noticed. I like being in the loop. I’ll take his conclusions, present them to people who may not have heard them, and see how they react in order to get a more even view of what’s going on in the mobile space. Disruptive Wireless is a keeper. Decision: Keep reading.
- del.icio.us/tag/nokia: If you’re a blogger, or simply obsessed about a certain topic, learn how to exploit social media tools to your advantage. I subscribed to the “Nokia” tag in Delicious, a popular bookmark sharing service, and every time someone out there tagged a bookmark with the word “Nokia,” it popped up in my RSS reader. Spammers have learned to take advantage of this, and I’m sad to say that the signal to noise ratio of this RSS feed has gone from fantastic to deplorable. There are still some gold nuggets in there however; remember that viral Nokia N96 video with Bruce Lee? I found it via Delicious, shared it on either Jaiku or Twitter, can’t remember, and then a blogger blogged about it, at which point it was picked up by Engadget, and Gizmodo, and then every other damn technology blog on the internet. It’s a true story. Today I can’t be bothered to stand in the Delicious river and pan for gold, but you may be interested. If not the “Nokia” tag, than some other tag. Decision: Unsubscribe.
- del.icio.us/dst: I have a friend in Helsinki, who I originally met in Tampere, named Olli Sulopuisto. He writes for a living, like me, but unlike myself, he is wicked smart. He reads more in a month than I do in a year; books too, not websites. One of his fascinations is the long form essay, and I make it a habit to read every single article from the New Yorker that he links to. He is also a film critic, therefore he links to trailers and reviews of movies that I may have never even heard of. This helps me find things to pirate. Sure he is Finnish and links to a lot of stuff that is only in Finnish, but I don’t mind. His bookmarks really are, pun intended, delicious. Decision: Keep on truckin.
- Design Matters: I’m a PC, not a Mac. I use a ThinkPad and I love it. Design Matters is an official Lenovo blog written by David Hill, one of the designers of today’s ThinkPads. You may be asking yourself: what the hell, how many people does it take to design a black box? If it was so easy, why do so many laptops on the market today look like a steaming pile of shit and are built to last only 12 months? I can’t link you to my favorite post, since there are so many of them, but one of their latest articles about the power of observation, why designing in the field is important, really exposes you to the amount of care and attention that is required of designers, and eventually that kind of talent goes into making a ThinkPad. Decision: ThinkPads rock.
- Design Matters changed their RSS feed a while back, I’m still subscribed to their old one. It’s dead. Delete. I’ll hit 11 today.
- Digg Search: I remember there used to be a time, before Twitter got big, and right around when Facebook opened up, that getting on the Digg.com home page meant something. The guys who spent all day online, trying to submit an article to get to the front page, they were fanatical. Much of Digg’s success is based on the fact that Kevin Rose built up a sizable audience on television, and those people joined Digg when he unveiled the service. I subscribed to a query that went through all the Digg articles with the word Nokia in them so I could feed off of the efforts of Digg addicts and make sure I got the latest news on my blog. Today things are different. Digg is far less technology focused, there are more spam accounts than I care to count, and all the action now happens in the comments, which when compared to YouTube comments, share the same lack of intelligence. Digg used to be hot, it used to be my homepage even. Today I still read read it, but very casually. Decision: Unsubscribe.
- DIGITIMES: IT news from Asia: Behind Apple, behind Dell, behind Sony, behind Nokia, and behind RIM, stands a very short Asian man from Taiwan who owns factories that spit out the screens, motherboards and components that make the devices that you spend your hard earned money on in an attempt to make yourself happy. Digitimes does their best to cover what is happening at the factory level. The prices of memory, the prices of glass, which factories are merging, which factories won a contract with Apple, these guys have it all. Decision: Must read.
- Dirty Aura: I don’t remember why I subscribed to this blog and looking through the content I don’t know why it’s still in my RSS reader. I’m not an entrepreneur and I’m not a developer. Decision: Unsubscribe.
- Doc Searls’s blog: This isn’t his personal blog, this is his blog on Linux Journal. Why am I subscribed to this? Decision: Dump.
- Drstarcat.com: The future of the internet hinges on how we’re going to handle identity. We can’t keep on jumping from social network to social network, email isn’t the answer either, something else has to be invented. Ryan Janssen was trying to invent the next big thing, and his series of blog posts about identity are riveting, but he stopped blogging in April when he realized that today’s market doesn’t give a rat’s ass. To quote him: “I’ve built technologies for markets that don’t exist WAY too many times before to do that again, so I decided to take a break.” Sad to see you go. Decision: Unsubscribe.
Hope you enjoyed Episode 5, I’m down to 261 RSS feeds from 293. As always, comments appreciated, as well as pointers to blogs that I can check out.