As some­one who spends a fair amount of time explor­ing the galaxy known as the inter­net, I’ve found myself need­ing to “trim the fat” and only pay atten­tion to the meat and pota­toes if you will.

Each night before bed I spend an hour or so read­ing var­i­ous sto­ries, reviews and blogs about every­thing you read here.  As I got more involved in blog­ging I started to take things more seri­ously, and I began research­ing ways to orga­nize my con­tent into a more friendly for­mat.  If you use a Mac like I do, and you browse using Safari, you might have noticed the Read­ing Pane fea­ture which allows you to put arti­cles aside for you to read later, or if you’re an inter­net vet­eran you might be famil­iar with RSS feeds, which brings you real time con­tent from your favorite web­sites, so you know when theres been an update (sub­scribe to our here).  Both of these fea­tures are gen­eral ways of keep­ing your brows­ing more stream­lined so you’re not all over the place read­ing stuff you aren’t even inter­ested in for rea­sons unknown!  In this arti­cle I’d like to go a step fur­ther, and intro­duce you to some of my favorite ways to orga­nize and keep track of what I want to read and when i want to read it.

First off, if you aren’t’ famil­iar with Google Reader, you should be.  It’s a great way to sub­scribe to your favorite blogs or web­sites via RSS and it keeps every­thing orga­nized how you like it.  Google has an app for it and you can down­load it for your Android, Win­dows, Mac and/or iOS Device, keep­ing you up to date wher­ever you are.

Going a step fur­ther are apps like Read It Later, Instapa­per and OS X’s Read­ing Pane or iOS’s Reader.  These basic apps allow you to choose arti­cles to essen­tially “read later”.  You’ll need to sub­scribe to one (you only need one) and install a book­marklet which you’ll click when you find an arti­cle you like and will then add it to your list.  When it’s time to read, you sim­ply nav­i­gate to the web­site you sub­scrbed to, and your arti­cles are ready and wait­ing for your indulgence.

Finally the newest of the bunch, and I’m not even sure what to call these apps.  I know of 2 that I cur­rently use, and both dif­fer greatly in their fea­tures, but offer the same basic con­cept — cus­tomiz­able content.

Zite — iOS — Free — Zite is a highly addic­tive lit­tle app.  It calls itself a “Per­son­al­ized Mag­a­zine” and it’s always learn­ing your habits by aknowl­edg­ing your likes or dis­likes of spe­cific arti­cles, and cus­tomiz­ing your con­tent accord­ingly.  When you sign up it guides you through a list of cat­e­gories and you choose which ones you’d like in your mag­a­zine, and it searches the web for blogs, web­sites and arti­cles about the cat­e­gories you’ve cho­sen, and arranges them neatly into cat­e­gories for your read­ing plea­sure.  As you click to read an arti­cle you can either “like” or “dis­like” it, and the next time you visit you’ll have more or less arti­cles based on your choices.  The inter­face is nice and very easy to read, and the shar­ing fea­tures include; email, Face­book, Twit­ter, SMS, Ever­note, Google Reader, Inst­pa­per, Pin­board and Read It Later.

Flip­board — iOS — Free — Flip­board is as unique an app as you’ll find any­where, and even though I didn’t have a clue how to use it for the first two weeks, the way it works with the touch­screen kept me com­ing back until I even­tu­ally learned it!  The app is sort of a com­bi­na­tion of an RSS feed util­ity and a “per­son­al­ized mag­a­zine” like Zite.  Upon reg­is­tra­tion you’ll be guided through an exhaust­ing list of cat­e­gories which they’ll then group into 7 main top­ics which become squares in the app itself.  After that you’re able to add your favorite web­sites, blogs or RSS feeds to the remain­ing squares and add addi­tional squares if needed.  Once you’re set up the fun begins.  When the app is open, you’re able to “flip” through your squares from story to story, and click on one to open it full screen so you can read it.  From inside the story you’re able to share to Face­book, Twit­ter, Tum­blr or email it, and you can also “Like” it through your Face­book account.  At times I find Flip­board to be over­whelm­ing with con­tent and pos­si­bil­i­ties, but with enough prac­tice I’m sure tat could eas­ily be elim­i­nated.  It orig­i­nally was an iPad app, and just recetly came to the iPhone (which is what I’m using it on) and seems a bit crowded but still fun.

These are just a cou­ple of ways you can elim­i­nate all that inter­net bloat­ing, and end­ing up in places that you never meant to be.  After all, the inter­net should be fun, especially when you’re using it for your own enjoy­ment read­ing about things you love and are gen­uinely inter­ested in.  No mat­ter which browser you use, RSS feeds are the eas­i­est way to stay orga­nized, and if you’re still unsure then Google it!  Happy browsing!