My feeds, let me show you them

I’ve spent today ploughing through a month of items in Google Reader from blogs and news sources in Birmingham which I’d not managed to keep on top of this last month and I must confess I gave up when I got back to March 12th with 600 still to go and marked them all as read. This is not ideal for a “blog of record” but I figured best to look to the future.

And, to be honest, there are enough Birmingham blogs out there now that you don’t need to rely on Created in Birmingham to keep on top of everything and I hope there’ll be more emerging as the Summer Of Art kicks off this year.

That said it can take a while to build up a decent list of feeds to monitor and since I’ve got a bloody huge one I figured it would make sense to share it.

This is an OPML file of all my Birmingham feeds. Don’t worry about what OPML means – it’s just a big list. Save that file to your computer and then import it into your favourite feed reader. If you’re using Google Reader click on “Settings” in the top right corner, then “Import/Export”. Follow the instructions and you’ll suddenly have 239 feeds of varying value letting you know what’s going on.

A few of them will be dead and a few of them will seem irrelevant so you might need to do a bit of pruning according to your needs. And of course there’s always more out there to find – I’m adding and removing stuff all the time. But if you want a rocket up your blogging arse this is as good a one as any.

You might also like to try Jon Bounds’ list which he uses for Birmingham It’s Not Shit so it’s got a wider remit. (I’ll confess to not trying it as I have enough to be going on with myself.)

Have fun!

(And if anyone else wants to share their OPMLs leave a link in the comments.)