As editor of Make Use Of, I can easily testify that there are not enough hours in the day to do everything that I want to do. So there are often lots of posts in my RSS reader (1000+), easily several days worth at a time, and I’m sure you’re the same. You have to go to work or to school, you have children to look after…..basically everyday life gets in the way of things.

RSS feeds are becoming more common these days, and are the most popular form of quick information as well as easy access to your favorite topics and articles. Of course, many people know of feed readers such as Google Reader and Bloglines but I have found a few other feed readers that may just be as good. Here they are (in no particular order):

1. NewsBeet - NewsBeet is what RSS feeders seem to be becoming like recently. A mix of RSS feeds, social networking, and news. As stated on their website: “RSS + Social Media + You”. If you register, you are able to create a “Beet” that includes a subdomain with your RSS feeds, as well as related material on the page, popular stories, etc.

While reading this, you may also want to check out using Google Gears and AideRSS with Google Reader.

I spend a good deal of my working day living inside Google Reader. It is my research assistant, bringing me stories from multiple sources all over the web that I may want to follow up on later. But the continual problem with “multiple sources” is the increasing “noise”, the information overload and the increased likelihood that in among all those stories crowding into Google Reader is the one truly great story, the gem that is going to get trampled by the crowd. That is why AideRSS is becoming an interesting assistant to my assistant!

While I was checking out a batch of new blogs the other day, I came across Feeddit which is a pumped up version of the Digg RSS feed - just the ticket if you’re a heavy hardcore Digger whose days are spent digging countless stories and you break out in a cold sweat if you miss the chance to bury the latest Microsoft story.

I subscribe to the Digg RSS feed since RSS is my hard working, never complaining personal researcher so I was immediately interested to see what Feeddit could do to make my working life easier. So I hit the subscribe button on the main Feeddit page and this is what I found out.

Last time we looked at the most essential keyboard shortcuts for Gmail to help you process your email faster. Today we going to do the same for your RSS feeds in Google Reader. I currently have 278 RSS feeds in my Google Reader and I can whizz through them all solely by using my keyboard. Where we’re going, who needs a mouse?

So let’s say you’ve been away from your computer for a bit and you come back to HUNDREDS of posts in your Reader. No worries. Using your mouse this one and only time, go to the “view settings” box at the top of the screen, drop it down and choose “Sort by Oldest” :