Feeding and foraging, a balanced approach to a blog-reading diet

I agree with Fred Wilson . As efficient as feeds are and as helpful as they can be in keeping tabs on a bazillion blogs, they aren't enough to satisfy my Web reading appetite. I liked My Yahoo for a bit. More recently I've been trying out Rojo. I check it religiously every morning when I want a quick and dirty take on the current buzz before settling down to work.

But throughout the day, when I have a little time, I browse. Many folks have the doctrine that they'll only read blogs that offer full feeds because they only read 'em that way. Everyone should offer that, but as a reader, it doesn't mean that's the only way I want it.

Take BoingBoing, for example. Looking at a bunch of text headlines from BoingBoing in Rojo doesn't do it for me. I usually decide what to read based largely on the accompanying photo. With a feed reader, you don't see that until you click on the headline.

Also, despite the abundance of ugly-templated blogs (like, oh, this one) there are still plenty of cool and different ones out there. Design does still matter. I guess what I'm saying is that I like to be fed, but sometimes I like to go out and forage for myself.