Diving Into Something New

Perhaps the single most helpful innovation in my life for far in 2007: the Google Reader ‘Next’ button.

I don’t like the RSS reader experience, but the Next button (a bookmarklet in Firefox, in my case) allows me to jump from actual blog pages in situ, one by one. I never have to hit the back button. I just click to go to the next place, glance to see if it is interesting, perhaps draft a blog post, perhaps create a Del.icio.us bookmark, whatever. But I don’t ever think, now, “what should I read next?” I just hit the Next button.