Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Thoughts on Google Reader

I use the new "discover" feature quite heavily. This is the feature that recommends new feeds based on what you already read. So far, it seems a bit like a blunt instrument. It can tell I like certain categories like food, podcasts, linux, tech news, libertarianism- but it can't tell the differences between blogs within such genres. Food blogs, for instance, can usually be further broken down between blogs about cooking, restaurants, food culture, food philosophy, etc... Each sub-genre has its own allure, vocabulary, and grammar.

Surprisingly, it hasn't noticed the small but growing number of Catholic blogs I subscribe to. I suppose it may merely be looking at numbers in terms of what I look at, but I actually read the Catholic blogs- oftentimes I'm just looking at the food blogs because they have nice pictures and the recipes take seconds to scan.

The really serious part for me, underneath all of this? I want to learn. I like being entertained, but I like education more, otherwise I'd be out at the movies instead of listening to a lecture that I found on the web. I continue to think there is a grammar to these things, a shape to the content that it would be quite profitable to discover.

And then I'd get a recommendation for some florist's blog or something, but I would really enjoy it because, although the subject doesn't match my genre interests, the writing matches my underlying interest.

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