Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?

I prefer information to have a single point of entry. This can be seen by how I handle email: I have all my email come into a single INBOX. Rather than using procmail or email filters to put my messages in folders before I read them, I have filters move messages after I read them.[1] This allows me to have a single place to go to to read new messages.

I do the same thing with browsing the web. Sure, I could use bookmarks or del.icio.us to get to web pages, but I find it easier to either use Firefox keywords or just search. The location bar is my single point of entry into the web.

The command line is the same, a single place to type a command to run any application; graphical or otherwise. This is much more centralized than Windows with its Start Menu, Desktop and the Quick Launch bar all trying to do the same thing.

I do the same thing with feeds from other sites. I use my livejournal friends page to aggregate all feeds into a single place. The entries get interleaved with each other like my email and are shown on the same page. This is different than all other feed aggregators I’ve tried. They all seem to have a side panel with a list of feeds and a number showing how many unread entries for each feed. That’s kind of like the Outlook method of email and I find it works poorly with how I digest information.

What got me thinking about all this was this blog post about how adults and youth digest information better. I’m not sure I agree with his conclusions, but it made me realize the reason that I haven’t started using a real feed aggregator is because my livejournal friends page makes more sense to me. It provides me a single page to scan for updates rather than clicking on a bunch of sidebar links. It also gives me some larger context as to how different web pages relate to one another. Blogs are often in coversation with one another and that is more easily seen when entries are woven together.

So, does anyone know of any feed aggregator that interleaves entries like a livejournal friend’s page?

[1] Actually, filtering my messages into folders after I read them is an artifact of the past. I just search my email instead.