Preventing RSS Overload

I wasn't a big RSS guy for the longest time, now I use it everywhere. I'm not going to list all of the things I subscribe to (RSS feeds or podcasts) in this post, but I am going to talk about how I like to use RSS. My current reader of choice is Google Reader. I didn't start using it until after I moved to Gmail, which probably had something to do with using other Google services.

I like to subscribe to things that don't post that often. Lets say I like knowing when Revision3 has an update, such as a new show. I'll subscribe to the RSS feed and check my reader every day. This way I don't have to visit all of these sites I want to stay up to date with, I can just check one place. Since I subscribe to a lot of blogs that post periodically, I always something new to look at.

The problem is, if I subscribe to a feed such as Engadget or Gizmodo, I get swamped. I simply can't keep up with the massive number of daily posts. However, I do like seeing some of the posts, probably the most popular ones. Often these posts don't make Digg's homepage or they haven't yet.

A long time ago I ran across the website AideRSS but wasn't yet using RSS as much as I was now and just thought it was a cool idea. Then, not that long ago Leo mentioned AideRSS and I looked it up again. By using the 'best' setting of the feeds I can wittle down massive feeds down to just the high quality content.

I should probably explain what AideRSS does. It uses PostRank(TM) to calculate the best posts for a given feed using lots of different services. It gathers data from lots of sources about each given post and uses it to decide the post's rank. You can then chose what level of posts to subscribe to: good, great, or best.

This service has allowed me to subscribe to Ars Technica, Crooks and Liars, Engadget, Gizmodo, and Tree Hugger. All of these blogs tend to, individually, post more then I can keep up with. Together, these blogs produce a massive amount of content. By using AideRSS on best, I only get a few posts each day. While I'm not getting all of the content, I still feel like I'm getting some of the best content.

Right now I'm only using AideRSS to subscribe to a few blogs. Now that I'm using this service, I hope to find some other feeds to subscribe to using this service.

Even though I'm using AideRSS to filter down some of the big internet blogs, it works for any feed. Below I have included the widgets that AideRSS provides for a feed, but these are for my personal blog!