I m also a feed junky, and because I wanted to have some features not available in most feed readers; I have designeda feed reader that matches and best google reader in many areas. To make sure that the feed reader can continue to evolve with the best features in the near future we will be releasing it with an Open Source license.

williams last blog post..adelph.us Feed Reader/Google Can’t have all the fun

“Stop blaming equipment and trends of society. Learn to cope with your addictions and overcome your personal issues. Quit blaming outside factors for your problems. If something isn’t working, look to yourself.”

Tinkering around with things can put us in a better position to succeed, but ultimately, it’s our own willpower and committment that effects real change.

Having said that, I completely agree with Nick and ditched my feed reader back in August to use email subscriptions–it’s worked just fine for me. Currently, though, I’m back to using bookmarks for keeping up with my (extremely short) list of favorite blogs–and only checking those bookmarks once or twice a week.

Getting off of the information overload grid is one of the best things any of us can do, regardless of the means employed.

I don’t need to read 200 blogs a day. I’d rather be outside enjoying the weather, doing things.

Jesse Hiness last blog post..The 2 “S’s” of Effective Business Writing

@James I think personal accountability plays a part, but I’m not certain what the benefit of pointing fingers at the individual is. My approach — to encourage people to change their tools to change themselves — might be a softer option, but I think it’s also far more helpful.

It’s incredibly easy to tell a fat man to eat less, but it’s not such a constructive piece of advice if you’re him.

Changing the tools and the environmental factors works so well because it removes the option to fall back into bad habits, and even prevents them from shaping in the first place. Remove the matches from your kids’ bedsides and you reduce the likelihood of waking up to a smoke alarm clock. Remove the supersize option as McDonald’s have done — or remove the feedreader — and make it that much harder to be overfed.

The tools and the environment really do have a massive impact on the individual, the habits they form, and the lifestyle they lead. When I write, I try to do so in a light-hearted way that steers people on a harder-hitting path to self-discovery. By encouraging people to go without their feed readers for one month by gently poking fun at how easy they make it to go astray, I hoped that readers would discover the link between software and habit-forming for themselves. I’ve had a lot of email saying that it’s working well for many, although most commenters seem to have rubbished the idea without trying it, which, of course, only proves this:

Sometimes, the shotgun approach has its merits!

I will say that both Harry and I have done a good long run using email versus RSS. In fact, Harry strongly opposed my insistence that he change to a feed reader (and I think we have a couple of posts around the blog on that situation). So it’s not that we haven’t tried both and experimented and formed opinions based on that – we have.

I think that the post you wrote also didn’t address that personal accountability of addiction to feeds enough as well. Had that been touched on – that people should read *less* versus switching their methods – I might have also been more agreeable to the post’s message.

Of course, as many have mentioned, it’s all a matter of personal preference, too. Some like a Glock, some like a shotgun.

You totally, completely rock.

[...] making their living working with the media than for someone who following the news for fun.) Here, the blog Men With Pens weighs in on why they like their reader. How do I set up an RSS reader? [...]

While I understand the desire to separate feed reading from email and recognise the right to make that choice, I think that subscribing by email differs in two important ways that many people overlook: influence and experience.

I’ll show you what I mean by replying to just two of the points in this post. You say:

Feed readers don’t create overwhelming lists of posts to read. People do.

You make a dangerous assumption here: that the tools people use have zero influence on the habits they form or the actions they take. I’d suggest very strongly that you’re missing one half of the equation there. The influence that tools exert over people is a powerful one and shouldn’t be ignored.

You argument falls on dangerously similar lines to the NRA’s motto: that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. This line of reasoning is fatally flawed because, of course, it’s the tool — the gun, in this case — which ultimately shapes the outcome and the action of the individual, and causes them to take action based on its intended use — to kill. In a similar way, a feed reader — a tool designed to make subscribing to a massive stream of new content easy — leads its users to do exactly that by design; to take on more than they would have done if they used another tool. In the same way, you could successfully argue that a gun is more likely to encourage someone to kill than a stick would: just look at the number of deaths in the national register caused by each one, then factor-in the comparative ease of acquiring a stick!

And, while it’s certainly possible to resist both ultimate ends — killing with a gun or becoming overwhelmed with a feed reader — never picking up either in the first place removes the likelihood of those events from occurring, especially when the alternatives — sticks or email in this case — make the undesirable actions harder to accomplish. It’s simple, really: changing the tool changes the outcome. You’ve assumed that it’s simply down to people. To me, it’s pretty clear that it’s not.

So that’s the first point: that people are only one half of the equation, and that the tools they use are the other.

Secondly, you say:

Stop blaming equipment and trends of society.

I’d suggest that it’s not about blame or trends. It’s about experience. And, again, there’s a world of difference in the experience that one piece of equipment — or tool — has over another.

I might be able to skim through the 30 second previews of 250 songs in the iTunes Music Store to make a snap purchase decision in the same time it would take for me to listen to just one 12″ record in a local music shop while I chat to the owner about what he knows about the band, but the experience is a completely different one. (And, if you’ve never listened to Crosstown Traffic on vinyl, you’re missing an experience there too!)

I could download 30 books onto an Amazon Kindle in the same time it would take for me to walk the 200 yards to my local independent bookstore and ask Jerry what one title he recommends for me this week, but the experience , interaction, and immersion is completely different. I’d also argue that the experience of listening to a track on a record player and reading a paper book is much better than their electronic counterparts (which is why I don’t own a Kindle). So it’s not about blaming Apple for making it so easy to buy music, or writing angry letters to Amazon for giving us too much choice at the touch of a button. Instead, it’s about the experience in each case.

So here’s where it comes down to opinion: for me, and for those who choose to read by email and abandon feed readers, the experience of reading by email is a better one in spite of what some would deem shortcomings, in the same way that many will always prefer paper books to the growing alternatives in spite of the paper cuts.

So that’s the second point: that it’s not just about one tool vs the other in pure quantitative terms, but about the qualitative differences: the experience design.

And, in a world where the choices available for consuming an ever-expanding stream of information are themselves growing exponentially, I’d argue that we’re all our own experience designers, and that the tools we use to create our daily interactions and the choices we make between them are increasingly important.

So, while I respect your right to disagree and commend you for telling people to look to themselves to fight their addictions, I think that perhaps you’ve formed your own opinion too early this time. I would have been more comfortable with a counter-argument presented as “I read so-and-so’s post, tried both options, and recommend you do it this way”, which is what I always try to aim for. Perhaps the fact that I’d tried both and built an opinion based on my experience got lost in my silly diagrams this time.

Of course, while it’s both the people and the tools that cause the end result — in this case, my post and your response — it’s far easier to blame the tools instead of the people.

Broadcasting our opinions is just so easy these days.

I don’t expect everyone to write something amazingly interesting all the time. But some folk will post once a month and still manage to come up with the most boring crap I’ve read. Why should I waste my time reading these people? I spend a whole heap of time writing, while they probably spend ten minutes a month.

I read Nick Cernis’ article about deleting RSS feeds and instead having visitors subscribe via email. While he wrote convincingly, you point out one very important point: it’s not the feed readers (or email subscriptions either) that are the culprit. It’s the person doing the subscribing.

It puts responsibility squarely on the shoulder of the person who created the overwhemingly lost list of blogs in the reader (or email subscriptions).

I just went through my RSS feed and pared it down some more. Every day I delete one or two feeds that have lost my interest. It’s becoming more and more manageable.

Stephen Hopsons last blog post..End of the Week Gratitude Theme #47