Branding is a topic I am very interested in, and Chris Garrett has just done a round-up of multiple posts on branding that includes a lot of good reads: Branding Blog Post Round-Up – Readers Best Branding Posts @ chrisg.com
Loved this post at ColourLovers.com about taking color inspiration from the masters of painting.
Charity at Design Adaptations has released a beautiful WordPress theme called Into The Ocean. It’s a really nice design and a bit different layout than the typical ones we’re used to, so you’ll definitely want to check it out.
The Question: I’m curious… when you’ve been away from the computer for a day or so, and you come back and open your feed reader, and it’s all lit up with posts waiting to be read, which do you click on first? Which is the one you can’t wait to read? I am looking for your must have feeds here, so I can add them to my own list. My first choice(s)? I go for the fun ones: I Can Has Cheezburger makes me laugh, and so does Dooce (plus she’s a wonderful photographer).
<rant>Also… regarding feeds. I am sorry, maybe I’m just lazy, but man do I hate partial feeds. It’s like the site owner is trying to force me to click through to their site so they can sell me something or increase their pageviews so they can sell their ads for more. I think there are probably some people who feel they have good reason for doing it, but I’m here to tell you that if you have partial feeds, you are LOSING subscribers because of it. I know, because I frequently unsubscribe from feeds just because they are partial. There had better be some EXCEPTIONAL value in most of your posts if you’re just going to give me a piece of your article and make me spend time clicking through to your site, otherwise after a post or two I will say goodbye to your feed.</rant>
Anyway, enough ranting. Tell me about the ones I would keep in my reader even if they were partial.
Amen on the rant.
I have dumped so many feeds because they were partial — usually a damned shame because I don’t add add feeds to my reader lightly.
Thanks for the kind mention Randa!
As for selecting the must-read feeds from my reader after an absence – is that actually possible?
I usually check Daily Blog Tips, and Andy Budd or Zeldman.
Oh, and the partial feed – totally agree. Ick. I see mostly marketing based blogs using that tactic, which I guess I can understand the motive behind it. But a few prominent designers use partials as well, and they’re not even monetizing, so I don’t really get that, but whatever.
Spooky. ICHC is my usual first pick!
Ummm, whilst I do agree with you over partial feeds, I rarely unsubscribe. Reason being is that a lot of my blogging buddies either have platforms who don’t support full feeds (such as mu.nu), or they are technologically inept so they can’t change it.
Myself? I have a full feed, though it’s my writing that gets people clicking through
I sometimes check feeds, rather prefer visiting blogs and read entries.
Rather than actually have a feed reader I subscribe in firefox so I can just see titles of the last few posts that have been written by my favourite blogs. If I like the title I visit via the link. Some people ie) me, didn’t realise that they only had a partial feed (wordpress dummy – but getting better) so a partial feed may not always be intentional. I changed mine after a few people requested it (I think you may have been one of the Randa).
Hi Randa,
I’m enjoying Chris G’s articles of late, but when browsing my reader I usually go through them by time added rather than topic or author.
As for your rant, Tara makes a good point about it sometimes being unintentional. I think John does the same, with his design / architecture blog and I’m sure it’s not for advertising purposes.
By the way, there’s a lot of press about the DoFollow lately, and how Wendy removed it from her blog.
I’m curious, what’s your take on things?
Not to be a kiss-a** but I have three I read religiously. In fact I don’t really use a feed reader. I am a Linux-Firefox guy, so the reader I use (if I use one) is the Firefox plugin reader ‘Sage’. But I really don’t use it much at all.
If a blog doesn’t have the ’subscribe by email’ functionality I really don’t even bother with it. When I get an email notification, I don’t read the blog in the email viewing frame, instead I delete it immediately and visit the site. I’m a visual guy, I want to see the colors and pictures. Visual appeal coupled with content is important to me. So I have three I must read.
1. Chris’s blog over at Solo-Technology.
2. Yours.
3. Scobleizers blog
I have several others, now I have several blogs that I read, and I will generally read them daily. But the three listed above, will have me stop whatever project I am working on, and read them.
I know having the feeds set to partial is sometimes unintentional- I understand that. What I’m talking about are the ones that are intentionally that way. I keep John’s feed in my reader and pop over to his blog to read the rest because I know him and I’m interested in all the topics he writes about and it’s always good stuff, but I would much prefer to just be able to see the whole article in my reader. (*wink* to John) Maybe John could help us understand the motivation behind partial feeds…
@David – the no follow thing… if I had a site like Wendy’s in which the comments became unmanageable just because of the sheer number of them, I would probably change to the Link Love plugin. Currently, if I think someone is just leaving a comment to get the link, I just delete the link. I’m glad for someone I know to leave a quick comment, but when someone with a blog about valet parking blows through here and leaves a “nice post” comment, I have no problem deleting their URL.
@Robert- wow, I am honored to be on your list! Thank you. I am with you on the visual thing. Reading stuff in the reader can sometimes be a bit dry. Your comment is a good reminder too, for those who think having a “subscribe via e-mail” option is unimportant.