How can I better curate my daily/weekly reading list and improve the reading experience?
July 27, 2011 8:07 AM Subscribe
Does anyone know of a good way to better curate the blogs and articles I subscribe to/automatically sort through them? I have seen some iPad apps that claim to do things like this, but I don't have an iPad and I don't particularly want to be restricted to only reading on said device even if I did.
Also, any solution for formatting articles in such a way that they could be printed to create a custom magazine or put on a kindle or something like that, to improve the reading experience?
I love to read. I also have a tremendous fear of missing out. I have subscribed to many blogs, etc. in Google Reader and skim through tons of posts daily, the problem is that I spend most of my time skimming and sorting the articles (thousands of articles a week, if not a day) I am interested in reading and don't have enough time left over to actually read the articles that I have set aside for myself. Additionally, I have found that reading on my computer is not as good a solution for real reading and I love reading from magazines, books, etc.
So my question is 2-fold:
1. Does anyone know of a good way to better curate the blogs and articles I subscribe to/automatically sort through them? I have seen some iPad apps that claim to do things like this, but I don't have an iPad and I don't particularly want to be restricted to only reading on said device even if I did.
2. Any solution for formatting articles in such a way that they could be printed to create a custom magazine or put on a kindle or something like that, to improve the reading experience?
I recently picked up a copy of "The Best Tech Writing of 2010" and the experience of reading those articles, having been curated and printed into a book was wonderful! I want to find a way to recreate that experience with my daily or weekly reading list.
I love to read. I also have a tremendous fear of missing out. I have subscribed to many blogs, etc. in Google Reader and skim through tons of posts daily, the problem is that I spend most of my time skimming and sorting the articles (thousands of articles a week, if not a day) I am interested in reading and don't have enough time left over to actually read the articles that I have set aside for myself. Additionally, I have found that reading on my computer is not as good a solution for real reading and I love reading from magazines, books, etc.
So my question is 2-fold:
1. Does anyone know of a good way to better curate the blogs and articles I subscribe to/automatically sort through them? I have seen some iPad apps that claim to do things like this, but I don't have an iPad and I don't particularly want to be restricted to only reading on said device even if I did.
2. Any solution for formatting articles in such a way that they could be printed to create a custom magazine or put on a kindle or something like that, to improve the reading experience?
I recently picked up a copy of "The Best Tech Writing of 2010" and the experience of reading those articles, having been curated and printed into a book was wonderful! I want to find a way to recreate that experience with my daily or weekly reading list.
Yeah, Instapaper. Sometimes I send articles to instapaper and read them there immediately because it is a less-noisy reading environment, though you can also read your Instapaper articles inside Google Reader.
There's a good iOS app for it, which caches the articles locally so you can read them on a plane trip. I believe you can also get at them on a Kindle, but I have no experience with that.
You can set up folders on Instapaper (I haven't really bothered) and you can "favorite" articles.
posted by adamrice at 8:28 AM on July 27, 2011
There's a good iOS app for it, which caches the articles locally so you can read them on a plane trip. I believe you can also get at them on a Kindle, but I have no experience with that.
You can set up folders on Instapaper (I haven't really bothered) and you can "favorite" articles.
posted by adamrice at 8:28 AM on July 27, 2011
Nth instapaper. It gets hailed as an iOS app, but there are ports for other devices, and you can read things in a nice format on the instapaper website.
The site also has information on syncing your reading list with the Kindle .
I wouldn't be surprised if Instapaper was one of the iPad apps you were referring to, but maybe you're not aware of it's Kindle and web interfaces.
posted by backwards guitar at 9:04 AM on July 27, 2011
The site also has information on syncing your reading list with the Kindle .
I wouldn't be surprised if Instapaper was one of the iPad apps you were referring to, but maybe you're not aware of it's Kindle and web interfaces.
posted by backwards guitar at 9:04 AM on July 27, 2011
Gonna Nth the Instapaper.
But I think there are a few tools out there which aggregate and reduce the popular items (based on your social networks) I think XYDO is one.
posted by stratastar at 11:06 AM on July 27, 2011
But I think there are a few tools out there which aggregate and reduce the popular items (based on your social networks) I think XYDO is one.
posted by stratastar at 11:06 AM on July 27, 2011
Also I suggest that you allow others to do the aggregation for you: Longreads, Goodreads, the Browser, A&L Daily are all sites that do the weeding out for you.
Also twitter is great for this. If you find people who have similar tastes (and there are people who act as aggregators (ex. Brainpicker although she posts so much stuff its insane), you can basically rely on them to find the good stuff for you, and it filters through alot better because if its good you'll find out about it this week or the next.
(this does not work with political tweeters because the sheer amount of noise will always overpower the signal).
My google reader habits have dropped exponentially, I'll still fire it up, but I get most of my reading from twitter -> instapaper.
posted by stratastar at 11:30 AM on July 27, 2011
Also twitter is great for this. If you find people who have similar tastes (and there are people who act as aggregators (ex. Brainpicker although she posts so much stuff its insane), you can basically rely on them to find the good stuff for you, and it filters through alot better because if its good you'll find out about it this week or the next.
(this does not work with political tweeters because the sheer amount of noise will always overpower the signal).
My google reader habits have dropped exponentially, I'll still fire it up, but I get most of my reading from twitter -> instapaper.
posted by stratastar at 11:30 AM on July 27, 2011
Is Fever what you're looking for? It's an RSS reader that does some nice sorting for you, and is designed around not overloading you with things to read.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 12:07 PM on July 27, 2011
posted by The Devil Tesla at 12:07 PM on July 27, 2011
Response by poster: Thanks for all the responses so far! Keep 'em coming!
Feedly looks very cool, I think someone recommended it to me way back when it was just an iOS app. Will definitely keep my eye on it, but am not entirely sure that it will cut out the clutter or just add more articles to my "to read" pile.
Instapaper suggesters, thanks for the tip. I have my on Instapaper, readability and readitlater. Any thoughts on those three or suggestions for others to check out. From what I understand all of them are just tools for the second half of my questions, not the first.
Stratastar, thanks for the list of agregators, I have tried using twitter for this purpose, but have found it to add noise to the pool rather then take away. Maybe I am just not using it right...
Fever looks very very cool! Although I am not entirely sure I understand how it works, if I understand it right, it merely ranks posts based on how much buzz they are getting online, not how much I am likely to enjoy them...is that correct?
Thanks for the pointers so far, please keep them coming! Below are a few additions to what I think I might be looking for:
-Ideally I think I would love to have a system where I read through tons of stuff for a month or so and rank it as to how much I enjoyed reading it, then after that have the algorithm take over and suggest what I like, I continue rating and it broadens its understanding of my taste.
-I would a service that prints my out/creates some kind of personal magazine based on the above algorithm...
-I know these things probably don't exist, but anything that comes close to this workflow or anything that can help me answer the question above are much appreciated!
posted by allfortheBoss at 1:29 PM on July 27, 2011
Feedly looks very cool, I think someone recommended it to me way back when it was just an iOS app. Will definitely keep my eye on it, but am not entirely sure that it will cut out the clutter or just add more articles to my "to read" pile.
Instapaper suggesters, thanks for the tip. I have my on Instapaper, readability and readitlater. Any thoughts on those three or suggestions for others to check out. From what I understand all of them are just tools for the second half of my questions, not the first.
Stratastar, thanks for the list of agregators, I have tried using twitter for this purpose, but have found it to add noise to the pool rather then take away. Maybe I am just not using it right...
Fever looks very very cool! Although I am not entirely sure I understand how it works, if I understand it right, it merely ranks posts based on how much buzz they are getting online, not how much I am likely to enjoy them...is that correct?
Thanks for the pointers so far, please keep them coming! Below are a few additions to what I think I might be looking for:
-Ideally I think I would love to have a system where I read through tons of stuff for a month or so and rank it as to how much I enjoyed reading it, then after that have the algorithm take over and suggest what I like, I continue rating and it broadens its understanding of my taste.
-I would a service that prints my out/creates some kind of personal magazine based on the above algorithm...
-I know these things probably don't exist, but anything that comes close to this workflow or anything that can help me answer the question above are much appreciated!
posted by allfortheBoss at 1:29 PM on July 27, 2011
Well, you mention thousands of articles... have you considered cutting down on the amount of blogs you read? For example, I used to have TONS of blogs about bento boxes, an interest of mine. I felt like I just had to read every blog post out there about them. Now that my interest has settled down a bit, I've cut it down to just a few of the best blogs on that topic. The same thing with video game blogs. I figure if there's important enough news about a particular game, the post will make it to one of the few blogs I read. I'm suffering a bit of blog-reading burnout and have cut down my number of Google Reader subscriptions by about half.
allfortheBoss: " -Ideally I think I would love to have a system where I read through tons of stuff for a month or so and rank it as to how much I enjoyed reading it, then after that have the algorithm take over and suggest what I like, I continue rating and it broadens its understanding of my taste."
It's not exactly that, and I haven't messed with it since they were bought by Google, but PostRank will rank the best posts on a blog (calculated, IIRC, by number of views, comments, shares, etc) and show you only those.
posted by IndigoRain at 2:46 PM on July 27, 2011
allfortheBoss: " -Ideally I think I would love to have a system where I read through tons of stuff for a month or so and rank it as to how much I enjoyed reading it, then after that have the algorithm take over and suggest what I like, I continue rating and it broadens its understanding of my taste."
It's not exactly that, and I haven't messed with it since they were bought by Google, but PostRank will rank the best posts on a blog (calculated, IIRC, by number of views, comments, shares, etc) and show you only those.
posted by IndigoRain at 2:46 PM on July 27, 2011
Ideally I think I would love to have a system where I read through tons of stuff for a month or so and rank it as to how much I enjoyed reading it, then after that have the algorithm take over and suggest what I like, I continue rating and it broadens its understanding of my taste.
I realise you said you don't want iPad apps, but I would keep an eye on Zite. They say they're hoping to release for other platforms down the track.
I haven't used it enough to tell how well it learns my taste, but I have found some interesting articles there that I otherwise wouldn't have read.
posted by Georgina at 1:28 AM on July 28, 2011
I realise you said you don't want iPad apps, but I would keep an eye on Zite. They say they're hoping to release for other platforms down the track.
I haven't used it enough to tell how well it learns my taste, but I have found some interesting articles there that I otherwise wouldn't have read.
posted by Georgina at 1:28 AM on July 28, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by fatfrank at 8:14 AM on July 27, 2011