Posted on February 28, 2006 at 4:19 PM in thoughts
Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.
A popular misconception is that blogs are for ranting and raving and communicating extreme opinions to the masses. This is part 2 in a series pointing out some simple ways blogs might be useful to you. Part 1 was about using blogs to stay in touch with friends and colleagues who don't necessarily merit a phone call all the time. Part 2 is about finding individual writers you like as a replacement for bigger, more impersonal news sources.
Part of accepting information overload as a reality is accepting that you don't need to follow every interest you have as if it was your job. This is very freeing; it means you can give up finding the most comprehensive news source around and look for sources that you simply enjoy reading. Nothing bad happens when you stop frequenting the one-stop shop and instead connect with individuals writing on topics that interest you. In most cases, even if this means you read the news a day or two late, who really cares? A reader named JB made the following astute suggestion on my Information Overload entry:
If you have an interest, find the best specialty site and use it exclusively, like your favorite bar.
Here are two such speciality sites that have become part of my routine.
Ign.com is an 800 lb. gorilla web site that covers anything and everything in the world of video games. Because they aim to cover such a wide depth and breadth of information, it can be a little big and impersonal. The writing has some character but it's hard to feel like you're building a relationship with the writers. I don't blame them; their mission and scope is huge, and I know how difficult that is. But when my video gaming habits became less about following a news beat and more about finding what I like, I started to turn to small, individual blogs and sites instead.
WayIPlay.com is one of the sites that does the job now. It's run by a small group of people, and the articles and reviews feel a lot more human to me. Here's an excerpt from their mission statement:
We don’t sit down and play video games from start to finish just to get a review done. That’s not what the average gamer does.If we only finish the first level of a game and then smash it against the wall, that’s our review. If the game sucks, you don’t need to play it through to know it.
That’s just how we play. We may finish a game in a week or we may finish a game in six months.
It’s all written based on the way we play.
After a while you’ll get to know us. We won’t be faceless reviewers. And may, just maybe, you’ll learn to love us. Or trust us. Whatever. We’re not forcing your hand.
Sites like this, run by knowable and sometimes likable personalities, are what I've always loved most about the web. It doesn't give me all or even most of the news as far as new game releases; instead it gives me interesting and unpredictable game-related stories of their choosing each day. Somewhere along the line I realized that I don't need all of that up-to-the-minute coverage to be a rabid video game player. I'd rather have something of a daily conversation with people who like what I like. And if I need to find out when a game is coming out, I'll still peek at IGN.com from time to time. Or I'll look at 1up.com. It's a little big, loud, and unwieldy, but it's fairly easy to find a human voice in there. The other day someone sent me 1up's excellent Two decades of Zelda article.
On the other side of my personality, there's Mortgage Matters. I'm not interested in economics -- not in the least. But I consider Holden Lewis' Mortgage Matters blog one of my favorite finds in the past year or so. There are plenty of other ways I could get the information he covers if I needed it, but I like how he says it as much as what he says. I don't think I'd ever read a personal finance web site, or a column in a financial publication about mortgages. But when I was researching interest rates, I faithfully read his blog as a painless and even enjoyable way to get the news I needed. I once had a question about a topic he covered, and wrote in and got a speedy reply. Even though I'm not tracking interest rates anymore, I still read it from time to time.
I find myself replacing many of the bigger information source sites in my bookmarks with smaller, more personal blogs of all kinds as I come across them. As always, your suggestions are welcome.