This is what my feed reader of choice, NetNewsWire, looks like on a typical afternoon. Many, many unread items in many, many different groupings. Looking at that, one might think that it is time for my to join the chorus of people announcing an RSS cull, trimming the feeds they subscribe to down to a manageable number.
Well, I'm going the other way. I'm adding feeds. And here's why:
The one thing that I really like about printed daily newspapers - and the reason I still buy them at weekends - is the browsability of them. You can work your way through their pages and discover things that you didn't know you were interested in knowing. They're a great vehicle for discovery that the web doesn't easily match. But by stuffing my reader full of feeds written by intelligent, lively and inquisitive people, all that can flow to me and, as long as I don't feel obligated to read it all, I can process through it more quickly than I can a newspaper.
So, no feed diet for me. Fill me up with yummy content, oh yes...
and you can always make a Yahoo Tube to filter feeds for more manageable content, or for a specific research project, if need be. I'm a chronic over-subscriber too...
Yes, I do use that sort of thing for particular projects. This post was very much about my standard day-to-day reading.
And be proud of your over-subscribing. :)
I do something similar with Google Reader, and then have two GReader widgets on my iGoogle page-- one for new items, and one for starred items. I browse through the new items (just headline and source), starring the ones I want to read in full.
I have found that Google Reader is one of the few windows I can open and browse - and still do other activity on the net (ie uploading) with my painfully slow internet connection here in Cameroon.
So when I am uploading pictures, for example, I can distact myself by checking feeds. It help my sanity.