Looking for a few good feeds

Monday, June 30, 2008 by Dave Winer.

I'm revamping my feed reading.  

FriendFeed has made me (and apparently others) much more aware of how I get my news.  

I've also learned a ton from the NewsJunk project. I get much better political news now than I ever have, and it's getting better all the time.  

Something I've learned... 

The thing that makes the difference: GOOD FEEDS.  

Behind those feeds of course are honest, smart people with a passion for information. 

I started NewsJunk because I was getting terribly spotty news about politics. I asked how other people get their politics, and everyone said the same thing, they hunt and peck. Now I get a steady stream of great stuff. It's like the briefing books political candidates get from their staff, but open to everyone. When a story breaks I get a bunch of perspectives. If I'm not interested, I don't click, but in an instant I have a sense of what's going on.  

And it's a level playing field. If a story breaks via pro or amateur, we get it. Fast. No waiting. (When we're doing our job.) 

Now, I want to straighten out my access to news about technology.  

In a word, it sucks!  

I want it not to suck. 

As much.  

Tech news is different from politics though, most people in the tech world, the insiders, hit TechMeme at least a few times every day, I do, at least 20 or 30 times. I don't want it to change, it serves a very useful purpose. But it isn't enough.  

What I want is what I've always wanted: News about products. New products. What people think about products, but features added to popular products. And not just the really huge products, like GMail and Amazon. I use lots of stuff. You should see my bookmarks and my system tray. And some of the products I'm interested in aren't even in my Bookmarks. Earlier today Steve Rubel wrote about Summize and a neat new feature they just added. It's a really small thing, but I care about really small things. I make and products for a living. Ideas are important. And someday I might meet the guy who did that, and I'd like to know about it so I can congratulate him. The personal touches matter. People care that you notice. I certainly do! 

You know what else I like -- hearing about products from the person who implemented it. What were they thinking? What were their goals? What were they surprised by when people used the product? What questions do they have? You can learn a lot by listening to the person who wrote it. 

Anyway, I want to know about products. Today I found two blogs that are devoted to reviewing tech products. I added their feeds to my mix.  

I want to know what you rely on for product news, and I want to start reading what you read, voraciously. And I don't just want to read it, I want to consume it.  

So please, if you feel so inclined, either post a URL of a favorite product-related feed in the comments here or send it to me at scriptingnews1 at gmail dot com.  

Thanks!! 

PS: If we can improve the flow of news about tech products we can create more opportunities for tech products. I'm sure there are niches we're missing, big ones, but they're hard to see because the picture has been muddied up by all kinds of peripheral stuff.  

PPS: One of my inspirations for this work was a post by Fred Wilson where he said he wanted a TechMeme for inspiration. I don't think it'll end up looking like TM, and your source of inspiration might look very different from mine. We've gotten too centralized, imho -- we'll now get more decentralized. Pretty sure I see how it could work.