RSS was invented to aggregate data and make it more consumable, right? So if I can’t keep up with reading through the feed for one site like Engadget, how do I stand a hope in hell in reading the site itself?

I think this is a bigger problem than you give it credit, Ryan.

Yes, twenty. Never more, never less.

Jane

P.S. Listen to V. ;)

102 feeds… Tiring… Stop launching awesome new blogs, I can’t stop the addiction.

I read the feeds of sites I like most first then move onto the others, also use FeedDemon’s Watches feature to group items with selected keywords, I try to give about an hour or two a day to my feeds to keep on top of them, but if I do get a backlog I will just mark some of the high throughput feeds such as Digg as read.

I also use linkblogs such as Robert Scoble’s to filter and see stuff without the need for me to subscribe to as many feeds.

Having a high res screen helps a lot it’s far easier and quicker to scan my feeds on my laptop at 1920 x 1200 then on my older desktop at 1152 x 864, the extra height is a must.

I read 903 feeds now (the OPML you linked to above is VERY old — I should post a more recent one somewhere). I put the best stuff on my link blog at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/14480565058256660224

Engadget shows up there a LOT.

That or honestly (and I know your occupational duties demand it) but you could try reducing your feeds, or dare I say, abandon the feed concept. About a year ago, I went from a heavy feeder (around 60) to zero. It became to much work (again totally understand that’s literally what it is for you) to keep up. I ditched feeds, and went back to standard browsing. It’s amazing how much better I feel. No really. To be in control of my own info collecting. You might be surprised how little you actually lose by doing this. It’s a fantastic system. Think of it like natural selection for information, only your active process of going for information means that certain sources have to out compete others. Some may have great content but only update twice a month. Others maybe have 20 posts a day, most of which are insignificant.

Some people think feed managing can do this, and I’m open to the idea, but I don’t think it works as well, and one is still flooded in even the best feed managed system I’ve seen. Humans are very good and searching, especially when they develop particular process for a specific niche. By making yourself the primary active gatherer, you’ll actually be doing less work. Again, I’m not sure how well that switch would work for someone in your position, but since doing this, I’ve actually diversified my resource base (important to me), deepened my knowledge, and saved time.

Or maybe we should just have a party with the halo and no kinds of pipes and you just let everyone pick one feed to delete from your reader!! And pizza.

On the road I use NewGator Mobile (for iPhone). My feeds, and read state sync between NNW and NewsGator Mobile so I have a seemless experience while skimming the ~150 feeds I follow (which includes this blog and Lady V’s). Skimming headlines, saving good reads for later and viciously marking entire feeds all read when there is nothing of interest is the only way to stave off RSS feed overload.

Later,

I’ve since unsubscribed from everything but Engadget, but I’ve got to be honest, I’m on the verge of doing the same with it. There’s simply too much content updated every day for anyone with a full-time job to keep on top of and actually absorb.

I think this is an issue you guys need to address, either through stricter editorial (are all the new TV/electronics release posts really necessary?) or by summarizing the posts daily somehow. I used to love the Engadget podcast because it was often my only way of catching up on the week’s news from the site in a format that I could digest.