All,

As Beth mentioned in her message, I find that I just can't quite get into
FriendFeed. There are a few reasons but they are primarily about design and
duplication. I already subscribe to a bunch of these things - blog posts,
twitter, flickr feeds -- from my friends.  So, that's the duplication part.
And it gets hit even harder by people who splice everything together
anyway.  But the bigger issue for me is the design. I don't want to just see
all of this as a stream -- either of friends as a whole or of a specific
friend.  And that's because I tend to want to interact with pictures, tweets
and blog posts differently. I don't give them all the same kind of attention
but FriendFeed forces that on me -- everything has the same weight on the
page.  I'd love it if there were ways for me to sort and arrange the layout
of the material so that I could manage the various streams in ways that make
sense.

Flock has the greatest promise of that to me.  You know, if it can get to a
point where it doesn't crash constantly.

I tend to use a lot of different tools to triage information -- handling
some info in more lightweight ways than other info.  I'm becoming an
increasingly heavy user of things like Yahoo! Pipes and AideRSS as a part of
the triage tools.

Basically, I have some various search based feeds set up that I run through
a Yahoo! pipe to de-duplicate. I look at those quickly on a Google tab that
I've set up. I also run the same set of feeds through AideRSS and, again,
look at the results via a Google gadget.  This is just a quick hit on the
day. Because it's by search terms and not organized by author, it also tends
to be places where I find the most new-to-me information.

I then start diving into my various feeds. I have them loosely organized by
group but tend to just run through the whole pile in reverse chronological
order.  I use Google reader and "star" anything I want to come back to.  My
goal here is not to read my feeds but to quickly move through them.

Next comes going through the starred items.  I handle each differently -- I
sometimes just share using Google reader. If I want it spliced into my blog
feed, I bookmark with Ma.gnolia (I like the way it handles the bookmarks and
the unlimited space I have to add notes).  If I just want to bookmark for
myself, I use del.icio.us.  I leave comments on the post if I think I have
something to add to the conversation. I'll occasionally email links if I
want to be sure they get in front of someone.

I've started using tumblr lately but that's really an experiment for me --
I'm trying to teach myself to be more observant about design -- so my
tumblelog tends to be about things that catch my fancy. There are a lot more
images and videos in that feed.

Blogging as become an action of almost last resort. I'm not sure if that's
because I'm busy or just because I'm using these other methods more or...I
tend to blog when I'm trying to figure something out and I often feel like
I'm collecting and organizing information but at a pretty high level.  I
don't have as much time to go deep as I'd like.

How about others?  How do you manage the info that comes at you daily?

best,
:mw