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When you come back from summer vacation and your neighbour drops the stack of newspapers on your kitchen table that you forgot to cancel, do you immediately sit down and stress about how you're going to read each and every one of the papers, or do you apologize for not cancelling and just toss the stack in the recycling box?

We're so used to disposing of news in real life, why is it so hard to let it just slide past us online?

I use Google Reader to manage my news feeds and am constantly feeling the weight of my "unread items."  A simple 90 mins away from the web can result in a few hundred new stories being posted to my stream. 

Same thing can happen on Twitter.  If you're not plugged in to the conversation all the time, things slide by and we feel compelled to go back in history, read all the tweets and catch up on what's going on.

I heard a great analogy on the TWiG (This Week in Google) podcast from Anil Dash a few weeks back.  Anil described Twitter as a party with conversations happening in every corner of the house.  If we showed up late to a party, we wouldn't quickly scamper over to each cluster and ask the people to replay the conversations to "catch us up."

Dave Winer describes the flow of information on the internet as a "river of news."  In what is also described as "the real time web," news and information is posted and updated as it happens.  We don't need to wait for a dinner hour newscast or morning paper to discover what's happening.  We find out AS it's happening.  This constant updating of information can be a little daunting to the information junkie.  The second you empty your newsreader, new bits are repopulating it.

When it comes to Twitter, just drop into the party and catch up as you can, if the news is truly exciting or important, it will cycle back to you and you'll be in on the joke.  To manage your news consumption, you need to better manage Google Reader and lose your fear of the "Mark All As Read" button.

Here's my Google Reader feed after having neglected things for most of the weekend.

Thankfully it only lists that I have "1000+" items to read, I'd hate to know what the number really is.  With some old tricks and new updates to Google Reader, managing your stream has gotten easier.

First thing I do is read things in "list" view.  This posts just the headlines in my viewing pane.  I can quickly scroll through a long list of stories and identify the ones I want to know more about.  Having this set to "expanded" view would post larger chunks of the stories in the viewing window making quick scans virtually impossible.

To help you filter the long story lists, you can call on some of the new "Mark All As Read" features.  The handy drop down tab on the side will not let you do a virtual toss of old news while keeping the fresh stuff.  You can do a complete purge, or toss items older than a day, a week, or two weeks.  A little instant house cleaning like this will quickly get your feed number down to a readable list.

Once you find a story you like, you can now choose to "Send To" somewhere else to read it later.  You can email it, post it to Facebook, twitter, delicious or any other filing system you find useful to share the story and file it as necessary.

The most important thing to remember is not to feel guilt about not reading everything.  This is something I need to remind myself of each and every day.  Because Google Reader makes it so easy to subscribe to and access information, I feel like I need to consume it all.  Try that and you'll just end up dominating the house party while drowning in the river of news.

Discover more about these features and other great updates in the Google Reader Blog.

catch the buzz ... pass it on.

Message Edited by buzzbishop on 09-14-2009 01:03 PM