When Kent Newsome blogged his idea of getting recommendations from other bloggers of 5 blogs each to help rebuild his reading list, he included me in the list of bloggers he was asking.
Kent, I'm delighted that you read my blog, and thank you for valuing it enough to want my views. Many thanks also for your link giving, much appreciated! Sorry for the delay, but if it's any consolation I took even longer responding to John Tropea's tag on media consumption diets...
As I said in my "media consumption diet meme" post, I must be one of the few bloggers in technology / internet who doesn't regularly use a feed reader - email alerts somehow feel more manageable to me. What's more, I don't regularly read blogs either - I know, I know, what sacrilege, shock horror! I don't have time to scan loads of feeds, Kent even your list of functional equivalent of news sites seems long to me. Partly it may be because I have to scan through zillions of things for my day job, so looking through feeds after hours feels a bit too much like work to me.
Instead, I generally check various original sources direct e.g. Nokia's press releases, Google's official blogs, Feedburner blog and the like, because a lot of what I write about I base on the primary sources, including testing things for myself (and here's why I prefer to get it straight from the horse's mouth rather than second hand). There are some blogs I'm interested in which I'll dip into from time to time, not necessarily subscribe to, but check out once in a while. Or else I'll research specific issues or problems on Google, and that way I sometimes come across blogs that deal with what I'm researching - but they won't necessarily become blogs I regularly read. The ever increasing list of topics I'd like to blog is long enough already, even with the sources I currently tap; if I started reading lots of other blogs too I'd have to give up my day job, and I can't quite afford to yet! And finally, for a break or light relief I sometimes use Clipmarks or StumbleUpon just to see if something random strikes my fancy or seems worth looking into further.
That said, Kent you mentioned that you read my blog for blogging and technical tips and howtos, and certainly that's become the main focus of my blog (though I do occasionally foray into musings about e.g. the biological origins of racism, or rules of thumb for decision making.) So, here are some general recommendations, restricted to blogging / technology blogs, and bearing in mind that I don't regularly read blogs and I am not going to list anything already on Kent's "keep" list or (I think this makes sense in terms of what you're looking for but please lete me know if I got that wrong) any "official" blogs like the Google blogs which are my main reading fodder:
- Phydeaux3 - declaration of possible bias here, Kirk is a friend and sometime collaborator (i.e. helps me out when I get stuck!) on things bloggy. But in my view his blog is a must read for anyone who uses Blogger, both for his useful or fun add-ons for Blogger as well as his well-written frequent scoops and tips about new interesting Blogger-related issues. Kirk's blog is the only one I do read regularly, especially as he doesn't post very often so I don't feel too information-overloaded keeping track of his posts!
- Ian Forrester - BBC developer and London Geek Dinner organiser, interesting tech tidbits
- John Tropea's Library Clips - I don't know how he does it, but John manages to keep on top of all manner of new Web services and sites
- Heise Security - for European tech news generally, especially on computer security
- New Scientist - my favourite hard copy read (I subscribe to their magazine), with feeds available on all sorts of science-related subjects from breaking news and physics / cosmology to health, genetics and even love and sex and cloning (why they combine the two though, I'm not sure I want to know!).
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