rowan.depomerai

In my last post, I discussed one of the interface changes in Windows 7, with reference (probably too much reference) to a blog post by Paul Thurrott, and I explained how that article wound me up a bit. Today I got incredibly annoyed with an article by the same author, and it got me wondering just how you find the voices you trust and like amoung the millions of bloggers out there…

Why Thurrott Is Off My Reading List

Mr Thurrott’s “Supersite for Windows” has for years been an occasional destination for me as I like to stay up to date with developments in the world of Microsoft and Windows. I find his pro-Microsoft anti-Apple bias quite galling at times, but I’m fully aware that some of the Apple blogs I read commit the same crime in reverse, and I’m hardly immune myself. But today, while reading his review of the new Release Candidate of Internet Explorer 8, I made a promise to myself to stop reading his site. Why? Well, he stated this:

One thing is very clear to me, however. Microsoft isn’t getting enough credit for really innovating in the browser space.

Here I may shock you; I agree entirely. I hate IE with a passion; the way it handles HTML rendering, its refusal to support open web standards, its abysmally slow JavaScript interpreter and more. BUT, a lot of good things have come from IE. Just one example is AJAX, the technology behind almost all modern web applications, which started from work that appeared in IE5. We’d be lost without it. However Paul then followed up with a list of supposed “innovations” in IE8, almost all of which appeared in Firefox, Safari or Chrome, months or even years before IE8 arrived. Microsoft is doing pretty good work in many ways with IE8, so why not focus on that rather than making false claims?

So Supersite for Windows is off my reading list. So too could be Roughly Drafted, a Mac focussed site whose tone is so anti-Microsoft that it’s annoying even me. Yes I’m interested in Apple and I love many of their products, but I don’t want too biased a report on the Apple news any more than I do on Microsoft news.

But What Now? How To Find A New Microsoft News Source?

But I’m left with a hole in my RSS reader. I want to stay up to date with Microsoft news, particularly Windows news. I could use one of the major tech news sites, but I also like a bit of comment from informed individuals whose opinion I trust. I’d also like a noise filter – someone to report only the stuff that I care about, not every tiny little story about the Xbox and other products don’t interest me. Where do I turn? I have a small hope that someone might read this and help me out, but I also wonder more generally; just how you go about finding blogs that interest you?

I have 22 different RSS feeds in my reader right now. I know people with many many more, but I carefully trim my feeds every now and again to just the ones I read most often and care most about. I at least skim-read every headline that comes in. But in order to maintain this I have to know and trust my sources. I know, for example, that Digital Spy’s Digital TV feed will keep me up to date with channel launches, technology changes and more in the UK digital TV space. I know that MacRumors will give me all the juicy tidbits appearing on the web about Apple’s workings, while AppleInsider is more likely to give me in-depth information about current products and big stories. BBC Internet gives me an insight into the work of some of my not-too-distant colleagues who work with the BBC’s online presence. The list goes on…

So how do I find a new trusted voice? A Google search isn’t exactly going to help. I’d get thousands of results and most will inevitably be rubbish. Watch Digg for popular sources perhaps? Maybe. Technorati? Possibly. But then I end up relying on the wisdom of crowds to select the best sources, and crowds aren’t always that reliable. I think I might resort to a terribly old-fashioned method and just ask my friends and colleagues over a cuppa… Wish me luck!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Personal Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.