Information overload, a quick tour

I’ve just accessed the Google Reader’s trends page and saw that in the past 30 days I’ve read over 15.000 items in 148 subscriptions. And that’s in a 30 days period when I didn’t had access to Internet at least 10 days… That’s a lot of news read, even if I just take a quick look at the title and scan for pictures of bold-ed words, it’s a lot of information.

A few years ago I wouldn’t dreamed of the Internet being so big and overwhelming sometimes. In it’s childhood we needed search engines to find information on Internet, not we need sorting websites, that bring in front of our eyes news that matter to us, not a pile of information.

Unfortunately I can’t seem to find a good website that puts together multiple sources of the same subject, with highlighted catch phrases. At least I can’t seem to find a website that does that efficiently and that can be trusted not to miss something important.

If in the past we feared not being able to find something now we fear missing something important or getting lost in a sea of garbage (that’s the truth, Internet is 99% garbage and 1% reliable, quality information). But that’s the price of free (or almost free).

What’s your method that helps you put aside garbage and clears the big picture? For me is scanning Google Reader for titles and pictures that seem to repeat on multiple websites I trust. If it’s everywhere it’s news, that’s the truth.