Feed a Fever
I’m constantly trying to scale back on the number of blogs I read. The problem isn’t finding good blogs. The problem the embarrassment of riches we face. I want to learn from what’s out there, but I don’t want to get overwhelmed.
That’s why I really enjoy Fever. This is a bit geeky, so stick with me.
Fever is a service that finds posts that it considers “hot.” These are the posts that are getting a lot of links from other blogs that you follow. For instance, if Justin Taylor writes a post and five people link to it, this post will be considered “hot.” If he writes a post and nobody you follow links to it, it will be considered “cold” and will drop lower on the list. “Unlike traditional aggregators, Fever works better the more feeds you follow.”
Want to see how it works? Check out the demo video.
So here’s how to do it:
- Download and install the Server Compatibility Suite. This is the trickiest part. I even managed to do this on an ultra-cheap web host, so it’s costing me only pennies a day. If you already run a web server, then you can install it there. The good news is that if you can’t get it to work, you’ve lost nothing but a bit of time at this point.
- Once you have it working, pay the license fee ($30). I think it’s worth it.
- Throw in the blogs you like to follow. You can export an OPML file from Google Reader, and import it into Fever. You’ll want to classify your feeds as either Kindling (high-priority feeds) or Sparks (supplemental feeds that aren’t as high-priority). I imported a lot of Top 200 Church Blogs from Church Relevance as Sparks.
- Once a week, I browse to the site I’ve set up using Fever and read it on my computer or iPhone. It gives me a list of the hottest posts from the past week.
If you want to sort through all the unread items in your RSS Reader, then this solution is definitely worth a look.
