How to handle all those feeds? Rubel suggests deleting them all when it becomes too much and starting again. Even Scoble’s. What you miss most is what you’ll hunt out and reload.

While this is an interesting idea (and mirrors some of the new thinking in time management – don’t archive, just delete what you don’t need), I actually value my feeds more than that. All of them. Some were hard to find. Some I share by exchanging files with freinds and colleagues. Others I just enjoy. My approach is to keep them filed. I have a must read folder and then the rest are categorized by my bizzare collection of interests. I only open the folders and look at the feeds when I have time or my interest is sparked. I’m also a fan of Dave Winer’s River of News philosophy.

To do this I’m using NetNewsWire on my Mac and NewzCrawler on my PC. I also use FireFox (who BTW released a really anoying upgrade then other day – it wipes your themes and other extensions) – there I have a folder nestled in my toolbar with 20 of the feeds I follow most. I can then do a quick scan without opening any windows. I’ve yet to sort out the mobile thing – my damn Balckberry is already intrusive enough.

So, all of this enables me to avoid the extreme measure of deleting them at the point of maximum frustration. It’s interesting that I have more tools for reading feeds than I do for reading email. It would be easier if Exchange/Outlook emails were just feeds.