As part of my forays into the blogosphere I’ve discovered and begun using some news aggergator programs. Radio Userland contains a default news aggregator that is incredibly easy to use and configure, just click on the XML banners at other radio sites and the feed is added to your list automatically.
On the Windows desktop I’ve discovered some interesting standalone applications. Jon Udell’s radio weblog provided this list. I’ve downloaded most of them and am giving them all a try. So far I like NewzCrawler the best because it seems to work easily from behind the firewall at work. When I get the others working at home I’ll be able to make more of a comparison.
The reason why this is a nightmare is simple information overload. I was having a hard enough time digesting my daily subscriptions to 15 or so email link collectors. Even worse is the automatic updating. No sooner do I navigate through one set of Radio links in an hour then the next set of links is auto downloaded and the sifting begins anew. There’s never any way to catch up. I’ve encountered this problem before when I’ve halfhartedly tried to read busy usenet groups like rec.arts.sf.fandom. I keep on the straight and narrow for a month, make a random foray into the conversation and then withdraw out of exhaustion. I’m hoping this blog experiment will last longer.
