Immersing yourself into the blogosphere and social networks keeps your finger on the pulse and helps you connect with others. A feedreader helps you quickly scan articles, blog entries, and site to keep you updated. However, they can be a time killer and easily overwhelm a person.

My feedreader has over 400 feeds. It wouldn’t sound so bad if each feed contains four to five new entries per week, but some sites post over five entries per day. When feeds feed on your time, how valuable is it?

With numerous high quality sites out there, it’s easy to add feeds and find that your reader has way too many. You don’t want to forget about these sites, but you also know that it’s unrealistic to keep up.

Here are tips to help manage feeds without eating too much time of your day:

1. Have a goal in mind before using your feedreader. Are you looking for something to link to and write about in your blog? Do you need an article on a certain topic? When you meet that goal, close the feedreader.
2. Organize your feedreader by topic. If you write about geeky topics, it might help to break down topics by sub-topics such as hardware, software, programming, security, etc. Look at the kind of information you need and create categories for those needs so you search fewer feeds. When you need a laugh or a lift, you can refer to feeds categorized under Humor, Fun, or Entertainment.
3. Limit the blogs and sites you check regularly. It might help to create a separate folder for regular reads.
4. Use a feedreader with a search feature. You can’t have a category for everything, so search helps here.
5. Avoid using the feedreader to just surf (unless it’s a slow day and that’s what you want to do). This is a sure way to while away your time.
6. Delete useless feeds. If you discover a feed that hardly produces the content you need or want, delete the feed. You have plenty of other good ones.

For sites that provide e-mail updates, I subscribe because they come to me. I can easily delete the e-mail or scan it to see if I should check it out — I make the decision based on my current schedule and to do list for the day. Subscribing to their e-mail feeds reminds me to check the site when I can. Although, this tip might not work well for those who have inbox overwhelm.

* Note: Click on images to see bigger image. Image will open in a new window. Click on _ in upper left corner to close the window.

AmphetaDesk 0.93 Alpha has just gotten easier to use from its earlier release. You don’t have to be a computer guru to figure it out how to use this nifty RSS reader.

Before we get into it, let me quickly answer the “What the heck is RSS? What is the big deal?” questions for those who haven’t had a chance to read up on it.

Quick RSS Introduction

Where do you go for news and updates? Which sites do you regularly read each time its updated? To stay on top of all these places, you hop from site to site getting your feed.

RSS (Rich Site Summary, if you really wanted to know) aggregators do it for you. No schlepping required. It’s similar to having Moreover right in your browser on your PC. Quickly scan the headlines and see what you want to read.

Until recently, RSS aggregators were centralized and have taken a shift to becoming decentralized. Sorry for the big words. In English, in centralized, you go to a Web site and select the channels you wish to receive and that’s where you get your updates. One example is My Netscape. Decentralized just means you get it without going anywhere. Right from your PC. Load the RSS aggregator and that’s it.

PC on Speed

I don’t condone the use of drugs, but AmphetaDesk is a good kind of drug and it’s addicting. Installing it only takes one step — unzipping the file. Being the neat freak that I am, I put it in its own folder in the right place.

Click on AmphetaDesk.exe and you’re there. The pop up screen runs the aggregator to fetch the latest news from resources already loaded into the software to give you a place to start.

Set the Settings

When I use AmphetaDesk or any news aggregator, I prefer the news item to open in a new window. After I finish reading the news item, I close the window and go back to the list looking for another item to read. Not everyone likes new windows. Never fear, you can change this setting and others.

Clicking My Settings takes you to the screen for these options:

• How should links operate? Open a new window or within the same window.
• How often to check channels? Enter the number of minutes to get news updates.
• Full path to browser? Prefer Opera or some other browser? Enter the path here to have AmphetaDesk open it.
• How long before giving up? Channels (news sources) do go down and here you indicate when it should give up looking for the server in seconds.

Easy peasy, eh? AmphetaDesk is user-friendly and doesn’t make you think when trying to figure out what everything does.

Your Remote Control

No fighting over the remote. Make other household members use their own AmphetaDesk. Adding a new of your choice channel is quick. Let’s think of a channel to add. Of course, Meryl’s Notes. Click on Add a Channel or My Channels and enter: http://www.meryl.net/blog/index.xml into the box and hit Add This Channel.

Anytime you see an orange XML icon or blue RSS icon on a Web site that you’d like to track, click on the icon and copy the URL. Paste the URL into this page. Ta-da! Now, you know the secret behind those icons. Oh. You already knew? Darn.

The difference between Add a Channel and My Channels is that My Channels lists all your subscribed channels. Click on the box to the left of a channel and hit Remove the Checked Channels button to dump it. Add a Channel lists channels for discovering a new one to add to your listing. It’s how I find some of the off-beat places like Ananova’s Quirkies.

The Channels Home link displays the latest news. The little blue globe? That’s becoming a standard icon for going to the resource’s main Web site. The envelope icon sends an email to the resource’s Webmaster or whomever is destinated to receive emails. Orange XML icon displays the raw code. Most of you won’t use it. The X deletes the resource from the list and you’ll never see its headlines again unless you subscribe.

Duh Moment

I emailed Morbus, the author of this awesome program, suggesting the ability to minimize the small screen since I didn’t need it cluttering my space (neat freak, remember?). He quickly wrote back and said to try minimizing. Duh! I thought I had tried that already. *blush* To hide the mini-screen, click on the _ button in the upper left corner of Windows. It worked on the XP. Minimize doesn’t work in all operating systems (Linux is one), so it’s not a guaranteed capability.

The software gets high fives all around. Morbus plans a few more features to give users more options. He has done a lot and deserves a break.