Call Me Converted

For the past three years I have been blogging actively but not using a feedreader actively. Sure I’ve used plenty of feedreaders. I’ve basically tried them all. I’ve been regularly subscribing to feeds in newsgator online and bloglines, largely to database blogs I like. I keep a top ten list of blogs in MyYahoo. And I get all my podcasts via feeds in iTunes. And I subscribe to delicious feeds in MyYahoo (text) and iTunes (audio and video).

But as I’ve blogged numerous times, I have never really used a feedreader the way most people do. I prefer to read the posts directly on the blog. I want to see the youtube videos that don’t come through on most feedreaders, the sidebar bling, etc.

But I’ve decided that I really need to be more organized about my blogreading habits and with the arrival of a new laptop (my macbook pro), and the prodding of Brad Feld, Charlie O’Donnell, and Al Warms, I’ve taken the plunge. The comment that convinced me was from Al, who said he loves to read blogs offline on planes in his newsreader. That’s compelling to me.

I am using NetNewsWire and I’ve imported the opml files of all the various readers I’ve used over the years. Then I pruned the list of blogs down to the 87 (no magic number there, just what I ended up with) feeds. I’ve organized them into seven categories:

Music
NYC
Personal/Friends
Political/Opinion
Stocks/Investing
Union Square Ventures & Alums
VC/Tech

And I’ve taken the final, but important, step of using NetNewsWire’s synching feature (with Newsgator Online) to publish my real blogroll. The list of blogs you see on the lower right sidebar is the exact list in my NetNewsWire reader.

When I add a blog to NetNewsWire, it will end up on the blogroll. I’d really like to organize the blogs/feeds by my seven categories, but I don’t know how to do that in Newsgator yet. When/if I figure that out, you’ll see the categories appear on my blogroll.

I don’t intend to stop reading blogs the way I’ve been reading them for the past three years (mostly by following links), but I do plan to check in on all 87 (or more) blogs in my reader at least once a week. I think that’s how most people do it and you can now call me converted.