Feeds, Feeds, Feeds
I have 42 feeds in the list on my user info page. My friend Hans Persson went through his list of feeds this morning, so I thought I'd do the same. I'll probably clean up in my list too while I'm at it.
Looking over the list, I have a pretty good mix of usability, productivity, general information and entertainment blogs and personality-based blogs. The vast majority is in English but there's a smattering of Swedish and German-language ones too. I always mention if the feed isn't in English.
There are quite a number of feeds that have very few readers. In some cases that's because I've created the feed and not many people have found it yet, in other cases it's a niche feed such as a a German-language blog about managing a supermarket. Apart from the kind of feeds that everybody and their aunt reads, the number of readers is not a reflection of how much fun it is to read the feed. I've marked my favourite feed in each category with ***.
Usability
456bereastreet is the blog of Roger Johansson, a Swedish guy in Gothenburg. He has a similar job to mine, with a focus on usability, accessibility and standards adherence of web sites. (2 readers)
alistapart is a much more widely read feed and e-zine. Its tag line is "for people who make web sites." It's written by a team of six, the most well-known of whom is probably the founder, Jeffrey Zeldman. (186 readers)
elegant_hack is about usability with an emphasis on information architecture. It's written by another net.celebrity, Christina Wodtke. She founded Boxes and Arrows (syndicated as boxesnarrows), the information architecture magazine and really should be more widely read. (2 readers)
rosenfeldbloug is another usability blog with an emphasis on information architecture. The author is Lou Rosenfeld, one of the authors of the famous Polar Bear Book.
thinkingia is yet another information architecture blog. It's written by Austin Govella in Washington, DC. (2 readers)
*** wildappropriate is my favourite IA feed. The yellow background on the blog will hurt your eyes, so read it on LJ instead and get the choice entries without being blinded. The author is Dan Klyn who is a nobody, if Wikipedia is to be believed. (1 reader)
Information and Entertainment
bpod stands for Botany Photo of the Day. It's published by the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden. It pretty much does what it says on the tin, and in a funny and erudite manner. Unfortunately it has had a problem with its RSS feed for the last week or so. I hope it returns soon. In the meantime, there's the Atom feed at ubc_botany. (78/20 readers)
hpana is the feed of the Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator. I use it to stay on top of what goes on in the Potterverse. For instance there was a recent link to a photo of the young actress chosen to play Luna Lovegood in the next movie. (1474 readers)
is_aquarius is a daily horoscope for us water carriers. (316 readers)
kittenbreak gives you a cat photo a day. They photos vary wildly in quality and the photo hosting is sometimes borked but the comments can be quite fun. (2515 readers)
*** snopes_dot_com is very useful for keeping up to date with all the insane stories that float around on the net. I often read a debunking of a story on the Snopes feed and later in the day I hear the same story told as if it were the Goddess' honest truth. (4631 readers)
spiegel_net is a great source for information about what's moving and shaking on the net, particularly in the German-speaking parts of it. The articles are very diverse and often contain photos. The German language is a lot more complex than in your average blog with long but grammatically correct sentences. (7 readers)
The "valley" in valleywag_part is Silicon Valley. It's a recently started "tech gossip rag." At Valley Wag you can read about who the Google founders are dating, who's leaving Yahoo and overheard Valley zeitgeist witticisms. It's a bit self-congratulatory but still funny. (1 measly reader but that's sure to change)
My friend drjeff is co-author of wellnessblog. It's an interactive blog that answers readers' questions about physical and mental health. (111 readers)
Productivity
david_allen_gtd is the David Allen of Getting Things Done. His blog is more personal than the newsletter. (7 readers)
gtdofficezealot is an aggregator that collects articles from several Getting-Things-Done themed blogs. (1 reader)
jasonwomack is a GTD blog by a trainer with the David Allen Company. (3 readers)
kellyforrister is another David Allen Company staff member who blogs about her work. (1 reader)
*** lifehacker_part gives you just the first few lines of each Lifehacker entry but without the ads. It's a good way of staying up-to-date with what your geek friends talk about. The motto of LifeHacker is "Don't live to geek, geek to live."
open_loops is another GTD blog. It's written by Bert Webb, who, despite his name, is an educator. (4 readers)
pavlina_blog is Steve Pavlina's personal development blog. He is intimidatingly prolific but also very inspirational. I particularly liked his long but eminently readable recent entry about Deciding What To Do With Your Life. (13 readers)
slackermanager is about working smart so you don't have to work hard. The author, Brendon Connelly, is a university administrator in the Pacific Northwest but his perspective is more business-focused than academic.
todone is a GTD blog by a Seattle web developer named Keith Robinson. (16 readers)
Personalities
cherie_priest is the feed for wicked_wish's more serious writing blog. (186 readers)
dilbert_blog is Scott Adam's blog. He delights in winding up his readers but sometimes his entries are sublime. Like this one about whale watching. The entries about the mechanics of humour in general and comics in particular are also fascinating. (381 readers)
duarvaddulaser is the feed for my friend, Hans Persson's blog, Du Är Vad Du Läser, "You Are What You Read". As you may have deduced it's often about what Hans (aka The Pink Unicorn) reads which tends toward science fiction, fantasy and graphic novels, but there are also entries about the legal situation in Sweden when it comes to intellectual property rights and everyday entries about his life in Linköping. He's usually a lot more cheerful than in that photo. (6 readers)
francis_strand's blog is called How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons. It's about the American author's life in Stockholm with his Swedish husband. Very funny and highly recommended. It's probably even funnier if you can identify the Swedish celebrities in his social circle about but that's not necessary to enjoy the blog. (3 readers)
I initially subscribed to jonathancarroll because I thought he was jon_carroll. Turns out he's not but he's a science fiction writer who writes thought-provoking, evocative vignettes in his blog. (253 readers)
makinglight is Theresa and Patrick Nielsen-Hayden's blog. They both work at Tor, the publishing house. There's a lot of (left-leaning) politics in the blog but they also write about their jobs. I'm no big fan of their guest bloggers, though. (740 readers)
mark_morford of SFgate.com has his own loyal following. Some people feel don't like his writing style but his values are easy to embrace if you're a lefty, hedonistic, tree-hugging, sex positive, sentimental, over-wintered hippie, like me and many on my friends list. (142 readers)
If there's anybody who still doesn't read officialgaiman or some other version of Neil Gaiman's blog, I sure don't know them. (Unknown but the number on the feed's info page is truncated, according to LJ sources)
Despite occasionally lapsing into Bavarian, the packetblogger's German language blog is not usually hard to read. It's simply a blog of a guy who delivers parcels for a living. It doesn't sound like it would make for fascinating reading but his personality and good humour make it very well worth reading. (6 readers)
*** Björn Harste manages two supermarkets in Bremen and blogs about the experience in German in shopblogger. Judging from his blog, it's hard to tell which he dislikes more: ceiling-hung marketing material or shop lifters. He rose to celebrity status in the German blogosphere when he was threatened with a lawsuit because he had written about the Bremer Sozialamt (Welfare Authority) and his entry outranked the authority's own web site on Google. Harste writes relatively simple, everyday German in a personality-driven blog. Highly recommended. (6 readers)
Looking over the list, I have a pretty good mix of usability, productivity, general information and entertainment blogs and personality-based blogs. The vast majority is in English but there's a smattering of Swedish and German-language ones too. I always mention if the feed isn't in English.
There are quite a number of feeds that have very few readers. In some cases that's because I've created the feed and not many people have found it yet, in other cases it's a niche feed such as a a German-language blog about managing a supermarket. Apart from the kind of feeds that everybody and their aunt reads, the number of readers is not a reflection of how much fun it is to read the feed. I've marked my favourite feed in each category with ***.
Usability
456bereastreet is the blog of Roger Johansson, a Swedish guy in Gothenburg. He has a similar job to mine, with a focus on usability, accessibility and standards adherence of web sites. (2 readers)
alistapart is a much more widely read feed and e-zine. Its tag line is "for people who make web sites." It's written by a team of six, the most well-known of whom is probably the founder, Jeffrey Zeldman. (186 readers)
elegant_hack is about usability with an emphasis on information architecture. It's written by another net.celebrity, Christina Wodtke. She founded Boxes and Arrows (syndicated as boxesnarrows), the information architecture magazine and really should be more widely read. (2 readers)
rosenfeldbloug is another usability blog with an emphasis on information architecture. The author is Lou Rosenfeld, one of the authors of the famous Polar Bear Book.
thinkingia is yet another information architecture blog. It's written by Austin Govella in Washington, DC. (2 readers)
*** wildappropriate is my favourite IA feed. The yellow background on the blog will hurt your eyes, so read it on LJ instead and get the choice entries without being blinded. The author is Dan Klyn who is a nobody, if Wikipedia is to be believed. (1 reader)
Information and Entertainment
bpod stands for Botany Photo of the Day. It's published by the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden. It pretty much does what it says on the tin, and in a funny and erudite manner. Unfortunately it has had a problem with its RSS feed for the last week or so. I hope it returns soon. In the meantime, there's the Atom feed at ubc_botany. (78/20 readers)
hpana is the feed of the Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator. I use it to stay on top of what goes on in the Potterverse. For instance there was a recent link to a photo of the young actress chosen to play Luna Lovegood in the next movie. (1474 readers)
is_aquarius is a daily horoscope for us water carriers. (316 readers)
kittenbreak gives you a cat photo a day. They photos vary wildly in quality and the photo hosting is sometimes borked but the comments can be quite fun. (2515 readers)
*** snopes_dot_com is very useful for keeping up to date with all the insane stories that float around on the net. I often read a debunking of a story on the Snopes feed and later in the day I hear the same story told as if it were the Goddess' honest truth. (4631 readers)
spiegel_net is a great source for information about what's moving and shaking on the net, particularly in the German-speaking parts of it. The articles are very diverse and often contain photos. The German language is a lot more complex than in your average blog with long but grammatically correct sentences. (7 readers)
The "valley" in valleywag_part is Silicon Valley. It's a recently started "tech gossip rag." At Valley Wag you can read about who the Google founders are dating, who's leaving Yahoo and overheard Valley zeitgeist witticisms. It's a bit self-congratulatory but still funny. (1 measly reader but that's sure to change)
My friend drjeff is co-author of wellnessblog. It's an interactive blog that answers readers' questions about physical and mental health. (111 readers)
Productivity
david_allen_gtd is the David Allen of Getting Things Done. His blog is more personal than the newsletter. (7 readers)
gtdofficezealot is an aggregator that collects articles from several Getting-Things-Done themed blogs. (1 reader)
jasonwomack is a GTD blog by a trainer with the David Allen Company. (3 readers)
kellyforrister is another David Allen Company staff member who blogs about her work. (1 reader)
*** lifehacker_part gives you just the first few lines of each Lifehacker entry but without the ads. It's a good way of staying up-to-date with what your geek friends talk about. The motto of LifeHacker is "Don't live to geek, geek to live."
open_loops is another GTD blog. It's written by Bert Webb, who, despite his name, is an educator. (4 readers)
pavlina_blog is Steve Pavlina's personal development blog. He is intimidatingly prolific but also very inspirational. I particularly liked his long but eminently readable recent entry about Deciding What To Do With Your Life. (13 readers)
slackermanager is about working smart so you don't have to work hard. The author, Brendon Connelly, is a university administrator in the Pacific Northwest but his perspective is more business-focused than academic.
todone is a GTD blog by a Seattle web developer named Keith Robinson. (16 readers)
Personalities
cherie_priest is the feed for wicked_wish's more serious writing blog. (186 readers)
dilbert_blog is Scott Adam's blog. He delights in winding up his readers but sometimes his entries are sublime. Like this one about whale watching. The entries about the mechanics of humour in general and comics in particular are also fascinating. (381 readers)
duarvaddulaser is the feed for my friend, Hans Persson's blog, Du Är Vad Du Läser, "You Are What You Read". As you may have deduced it's often about what Hans (aka The Pink Unicorn) reads which tends toward science fiction, fantasy and graphic novels, but there are also entries about the legal situation in Sweden when it comes to intellectual property rights and everyday entries about his life in Linköping. He's usually a lot more cheerful than in that photo. (6 readers)
francis_strand's blog is called How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons. It's about the American author's life in Stockholm with his Swedish husband. Very funny and highly recommended. It's probably even funnier if you can identify the Swedish celebrities in his social circle about but that's not necessary to enjoy the blog. (3 readers)
I initially subscribed to jonathancarroll because I thought he was jon_carroll. Turns out he's not but he's a science fiction writer who writes thought-provoking, evocative vignettes in his blog. (253 readers)
makinglight is Theresa and Patrick Nielsen-Hayden's blog. They both work at Tor, the publishing house. There's a lot of (left-leaning) politics in the blog but they also write about their jobs. I'm no big fan of their guest bloggers, though. (740 readers)
mark_morford of SFgate.com has his own loyal following. Some people feel don't like his writing style but his values are easy to embrace if you're a lefty, hedonistic, tree-hugging, sex positive, sentimental, over-wintered hippie, like me and many on my friends list. (142 readers)
If there's anybody who still doesn't read officialgaiman or some other version of Neil Gaiman's blog, I sure don't know them. (Unknown but the number on the feed's info page is truncated, according to LJ sources)
Despite occasionally lapsing into Bavarian, the packetblogger's German language blog is not usually hard to read. It's simply a blog of a guy who delivers parcels for a living. It doesn't sound like it would make for fascinating reading but his personality and good humour make it very well worth reading. (6 readers)
*** Björn Harste manages two supermarkets in Bremen and blogs about the experience in German in shopblogger. Judging from his blog, it's hard to tell which he dislikes more: ceiling-hung marketing material or shop lifters. He rose to celebrity status in the German blogosphere when he was threatened with a lawsuit because he had written about the Bremer Sozialamt (Welfare Authority) and his entry outranked the authority's own web site on Google. Harste writes relatively simple, everyday German in a personality-driven blog. Highly recommended. (6 readers)