Lots o’ love coming soon!
Hey internet folks who read our little blog (thanks btw).
I’m sort of old school I guess when it comes to checking blog updates on my favorite sites, I don’t use RSS.
Rather, I use “Open in Tabs” on a folder called “Fun Stuff” in Safari’s Favorites toolbar. How 2003, right?
I intended this post to be more about how the lack of updates here has been because we are all so busy on some amazing projects for Dragon, Microsoft, Red Ledge, 2K and more, and not about my silly Favorites situation. We’re doing some amazing work and will be posting it soon. Hold on to your internet hats, we have some bangers coming out!
Ok, so now that’s out of the way, back to my digression!
So when I click “Open in Tabs”, I normally then go back to working, and let the 30 or so websites open up and make for one huge-assed tabbed window. It’s sort of like popping cookies in the oven…and then DING, my websites are ready!
I then go through each site (http://www.achewood.com has been my first tab for years), read what’s new and more often then not, just quickly hit Command+W and move on to the next one. I check out the usual stuff from Google News, Wired, Kotaku, Kottke, Penny Arcade, FWA, etc. including Buk’s own blog, on which I saw Mark’s old-ish post about Kill Start. And that’s what made me write this weird post, thinking that we needed some fresh content (the definition of content, used pretty loosely if you’ve made it this far in my post).
Lastly, I don’t use RSS because of, believe it or not, banner ads! I like to look at them, see what’s new, what’s cool. I owe it to my clients and my industry to see what’s out there, and RSS doesn’t deliver that.
What are your browsing habits? –DAN
Sorry, I have to call you out on this one…
You could save lots of time and visit more sites if you used RSS feeds. And you also wouldn’t have any shortage of banner ads to look at.
I currently subscribe to 287 feeds, and I get through just about everything I need to in about 30 minutes. Opening up 287 tabs would probably take up a good chunk of my day. A high percentage of the feeds I subscribe to only offer summaries, so I have to visit the actual site to read the article. I also read a lot of design blogs, and want to see the sites I’m visiting because they are beautiful. NetNewsWire has a webkit based browser built right into it.
Most readers (Safari for one) allow you to display just a list of titles for new posts that link right to the entries. Using a list of current content to determine whether or not you should visit a site at that moment ensures you aren’t wasting your time, and lets you move on to the next item.
RSS feeds are also handy for knowing when your favorite bands are playing, seeing the latest images which of your 62 flickr contacts have posted (do you visit 62 flickr pages every day?), skimming the New York Times for stories that interest you, and what the $0.99 iTunes movie of the week is.
This is the internet. If you can’t find at least 287 websites devoted to banner ad trends and news, you should probably quit your day job and start one.
Comment by Mark — July 25, 2008 @ 6:55 am
Mark, ever heard of Cognitive Overload?
Comment by Andrew — July 27, 2008 @ 7:20 pm
Sheesh! 287 websites and 62 Flickr contacts to look at? That sounds like a job itself!
Comment by Dan — July 28, 2008 @ 9:07 am