daily read app dot appspot dot com
I created a very simple tool that helps me keep up to date with sites I find interesting.
The point of putting together this little application was to attempt to solve a very specific problem that I have had for the past few years of using the internet: I’m interested in too much stuff, which means there are a lot of sites I want to visit. It’s hard to manage that list of sites.
I wrote about this in the summer of ‘09, and I lightly suggested that one way to keep up with lots of different topics across the web was to assign a topic to each day of the week. Monday would be web design, for example, Tuesday would be architecture, Wednesday would be music, and so on. It seemed like an overly structured way to consume content, and I never actually intended to try something like this (but it was fun to think about organizing a Google Reader account organized by day of the week, instead of category).
Recently, the same frustration has emerged: I want to learn about lots of different topics from lots of different sources, but I’m unsure how to change my browsing habits to see everything I want to see on a regular basis. There are a few sites I’ll check out because they’re guaranteed to lead to interesting content (mainly Hacker News and Twitter), but other ones — the ones I forget about — offer glimpses into various subcultures and niche interests that I’ve always enjoyed learning about. Scouting NY, Second Avenue Sagas and Flux Blog are good examples of one of those niche interests.
The solution I came up with is as simple as I could make it. I’ve added a single bookmark to my browser’s bookmark bar called “daily read” which links to a simple app I’ve built. When I click the link, I’m redirected to a random page in a queue of “daily read” sites that I want to visit regularly. The list of sites is a simple comma-separated list that is always editable by visiting another webpage.
Why does this work for me?
The biggest advantage of this little tool is that it removes any friciton in deciding what to visit when I have time to sit down and read, or a spare moment at work between tasks. Not only would I usually forget about the fringe sites I wanted to visit again, I would let muscle memory take over, visiting the same few sites only to realize that I had missed the chance to read about something else just because I wasn’t in the habit.
By maintaining a separate list of sites that I want to visit regularly, I can trust that over a period of time of using the app — two weeks, say — I’ll see everything that I wanted to see. Once I’ve gone through the queue, the sites are shuffled and the list starts over again.
What’s more, and probably the most intriguing, is that this way of browsing helps me get a better handle of each site’s “personality.” As I visit these sites regularly, I can get a better sense of the editorial team or individual behind the project.
You can use the app by visiting dailyreadapp.appspot.com. After you’ve set up a list of sites, just visit that same URL to shuffle the list. You can edit the list at dailyreadapp.appspot.com/settings.
You don’t need to use this, seriously
I want to reiterate that this is a tool I built for myself, not something that will ever “go viral” or be sold for millions. Anyone with basic coding skills can build their own version in a few hours.
The point of the project, and the most satisfying part of the experience, has been in reducing the problem down a very simple solution: a single button. Whenever I come across an interesting site that seems like it’s got some spunk, I’ll add it to the list. Sites that turn out to be boring get removed from the list. There’s no overhead to make this work because it lives in the browser. You don’t even need to create a bookmark for the site. You just have to remember one URL, and that’s the key to the other sites you’re interested in.
There are a million other ways to deal with this problem (um, regular bookmarks, right?), but to me, this is the most dead-simple solution to guarantee that I’ll always see everything I want to see on the interweb, without stressing about what to view, when.
Because, admittedly, I stress about that kind of stuff.
