What to read, what to read.  Let’s say you don’t already have a dozen opml’s here and there, and let’s say further that you don’t constantly struggle to pare down your feeds to 50 or so.  Take a gander at Alltop.  Not a show-stopping sort of deal, but good at what it’s good at.

I’m going to call it some kind of hybrid between newser (but without the news-only focus and pictures) and a kind of ready-made netvibes page.  It’s, quite simply, an index of topics with a sub-index of high-quality blogs.  Right away, I can see the allure for at least a couple fairly distinct demographics:

•  you’re a little new to the feed thing (RSS what?) but ready to step out past google news, your yahoo page, and a half-dozen newspaper sites; Alltop is a great place for you to click up a couple of interest areas, and find a steady stream of varying perspectives respecting that scope; or
• you’re feeling a little lulled to a discomforting level of complacency… you’re suffering from a little bit of group think since it has become more and more evident to you that fully 1/2 of the feeds you read spend 3/4 of their energy covering well-duplicated stories and the other half spend 7/8 of their keystrokes covering one another’s coverage (of the same stories already well-duplicated by that first 1/2 of your feeds); in the end, there you are feeling like only 3/8 of the posts you read have some shot at showing you something original and to be honest, only two-fifths of that is of interest to you; enter stage left: Alltop; you go to Alltop, you find maybe a dozen new feeds (and the quality is there, so I’ll bet you can) to put in your main opml; then you follow a classic honing rule for feed-lovers — you remove two of your current feeds for every new feed you add.  Voila! The time you spend (compulsively) reading feeds once again has a broadening effect on your mind.  And it isn’t that the aim?

For this writer (and as you know I’m in that latter demo), Alltop brought me a nearly instant reward:  Lifedev.  Don’t ask me what internet I’ve been reading, but thanks to Alltop for getting me here.  I can somewhat fairly say I’ve been a devoted reader of Gina and the gang at Lifehacker for quite a time (and by devoted, I just mean that it’s in all of my (both mobile and non) opml’s and I glance its way probably 15-25 times a week). However comma the “Lifehacks” index at Alltop has introduced me to Lifedev, and I have to say my DIY brainscan now indicates additional areas of cerebral activity.

See for yourself, Lifedev’s last few:

• 11 Steps to Becoming Addicted to Running
• Maybe Friday is the New Saturday?
• The Freelancer’s Guide to Setting Perfect Deadlines

So go, delight … prosper.