Sure, subscribing to RSS feeds is simple enough. Maybe that’s why I like to make it complicated.

Step 1: Subscribe to the RSS feed in Google Reader.
Step 2: File all the feeds away into folders.
Step 3: Publish each of the folders as its own uber-feed. (Under “manage subscriptions.”)
Step 4: Subscribe to each of those uber-feeds in Netvibes, and set them each to open on the original site.
Step 5: Fun!1

Why? This weekend while the wife was away,2 I pared down my 225 RSS subscriptions to 175.3 That’s still too much to keep up with.

So I can go to Netvibes now and view the seven most recent posts in each category. Google Reader lets me look at it by category, but it’s nice to have it all there on one screen without a rolling list of hundreds of posts.

1. Or is it profit? [↩]
2. I really know how to have a good time on my own. Really I do. [↩]
3. Google Reader has a great little tab under the Stats section that make it very easy to see which feeds are dormant. [↩]