Forgetting How To Surf

on 12.17.04, 09:23am in weblog • comments (7)

[Kevin Fox] About 90% of my web reading nowadays spawns from the 45 RSS feeds that I follow, the articles they point to, and the sites linked from within those articles. Now when I finish reading them, I’m almost at a loss as to where to surf next.

I’ve forgotten how to surf. I remember when it wasn’t about finding a particular piece of information, but just about seeing what’s out there. So much of how I surf finds me the latest memes, what everyone else is talking about, that I’ve lost most of my ability to just go out and hunt for interesting things… How do you surf? Why? What are your daily habits?

While an older entry (June 20th, 2003), I just came across this today and thought that Kevin points out an interesting fact and asks a great question. I have noticed a dramatic difference to my web habits today than a few years ago: I have 100+ RSS feeds I’m subscribed to, I read almost everything in an aggregator and I’m usually reading about the same ‘interesting’ things as 500 other bloggers at Microsoft.

I’m feeling a real need to diversify my blogroll a bit. Some thoughts: drop the "alpha-bloggers", read more weblogs that are focused more on Mac and Linux, and add more feeds that are "non-technical" (for example, Ben Saunders site has really started to inspire me).

How about it: How do you surf? Any good recommendations for blogs not on the "a-list"?

7 Comments

    James Kendrick (December 17, 2004 @ 12:17 pm)

    I had a similar epiphany about my browsing habits and wrote about it a while back. It’s called “Step outside and smell the bloggers”.

    http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2004/10/step_outside_an.html

    Mike Gunderloy (December 17, 2004 @ 2:55 pm)

    Try http://www.syndic8.com/boxrss.php?Box=RandomHeadlines&N=10 and http://www.syndic8.com/boxrss.php?Box=RecentFeedsN=10 to hunt for serendipity in blogland.

    Dustin (December 17, 2004 @ 9:34 pm)

    Usually when I run out of stuff in my aggregator, I check out the community bookmarks sites. I use http://spurl.net to manage my bookmarks so I usually look there. They’ve got a recent list that’s usually pretty random. I usally check out the “Hot and Fresh” list. They’ve also got lists divided up by topic. There are also RSS feeds for all the different lists if you want to keep it in the aggregator.

    A lot of people also like http://del.icio.us. They’ve got some pretty good categories setup. But I usually don’t like the quality of the stuff there as much as the stuff I find on Spurl.

    Steve Makofsky's WebLog (December 27, 2004 @ 5:49 am)

    Creating Passionate Users

    Steve Makofsky's WebLog (December 31, 2004 @ 8:48 am)

    Resolutions

    Steve Makofsky's WebLog (December 31, 2004 @ 8:53 am)

    Resolutions

    Jeremy (January 21, 2006 @ 1:54 am)

    I think I’m a little bit late…
    Try technorati (www.technorati.com) -
    in my mind it’s one of the best sources
    for finding non-a-blogs.

    Please visit my little real estate tips
    here

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