Subject/Object

Steven Chabot

River of News. It is a style of reading RSS feeds where all the posts are jumbled together in one big mash, unlike Bloglines et. al. which sort posts by feed source, and even user generated folders. When you read with RoN, you surf along, never bored too much by one source because the next one could be totally different.

The concept has been around for a while, but there was only one online news reader which did it, well, until now, and that was Google Reader. Sure, it was slow in the beginning, but I loved the fact that it was so simple: titles on the left, content on the right. Now what do I find when I load Reader at like 8 pm tonight? Clutter, extra clicking, dreaded folders, and no more River of News. Sure, the developers like to assure us:

Well, things might look different, but we made sure the new interface enabled the reading style of current Reader users. For example, clicking “All items” and choosing “List view” should make the experience feel quite familiar.

But, really, that setting just doesn’t cut it. In the first place, it doesn’t use all of the screen space. The titles are displayed on the right, and clicking on them opens them up, pushing all the other titles down. But that leaves 1/2 of my screen wasted with Folders which I made over a year ago and don’t use, and a link to the “Home” section of the reader which is utterly useless. Ok, not all of us have a huge LCD, an I have a 12″ laptop which only does 1024×768, and I need all the space I can get.

Luckily the haven’t taken away the old interface, and I hope they never do because I have tried other readers and I just can’t do it. Although, the more I look at the content of my feeds, the more I think that maybe this is a good thing.

§67 · September 28, 2006 · Philosophy · (No comments) ·

¶ Subject/Object Wiki

Partially in an effort at procrastination, I have set up a wiki at wiki.subjectobject.net. Hopefully I can work on research there and have it open to the public.

Right now my classes are so introductionary, it is hard to find anything interesting to say about them. For instance, my theory course, Information and its Social Contexts, has some every scholarly readings, but I find the classes to be at a very elementary level. However, I realize that they are core and required courses–hopefully I can do some interesting work in the assignments.

I will say that my Introduction to Bibliographic Control is much more interesting then I thought it could be, but I am falling behind on the non-graded assignments (which I will work on right after this post).

But, as expected, my Book History and Print Culture class is amazing. Partially because it gathers together students from a variety of departments: English, French, Fine Art, History (that is, others not in a professional-ish Master’s). The theoretical level of discussion is really high, and there are only 15 people in the course which makes for a great 3 hours.

I don’t know which way I am going to go yet as per interests and professional life, but I am really interested in the possibility of Analytic and Historical Bibliography in some respects, maybe working with Rare Books as well in some kind of scholarship. Although I am still interested as well in the future of the book, and I cannot seem to disconnect the two in my mind.

The founder of the Book History Program here was also the General Editor of the 3 vol. History of the Book in Canada. She came in and gave a lecture on National Histories of the Book on Monday. I hope I can go to some lectures held by the Toronto Centre for the Book over the next few weeks to get a feel for things.