Blogs != Books

Bill Wagner writes both about cutting back on blog reading and getting more out of books. He speaks of too much blog content being not having enough detail, lacking editorial review, and having too low a signal to noise ratio. He says he's cutting his blogroll down to 50 from over 200 feeds in order to cut out things like posts on Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I'm not particularly bothered by "off topic" posts on blogs. First, using the title of the post, I delete 95% of what I get from SlashDot -- but the other 5% is great stuff to me. Secondly, I do on occasion find very useful pieces of information. Eric Gunnerson's blog pointed me to a great place to find information on headphones as well as the terrific book Take Back Your Life!, a great organizational guide for effectively using Outlook to organize yourself. (I wonder if Wagner's complaint about Hitchhiker was from Gunnerson's posts about the movie...) Perhaps more important are Wagner's thoughts about low detail and technical errors. I've never thought of blogs as having the answers to all my questions, nor are they my sole source of material when searching for a solution to a problem. I tend to use several sources to cross-check potential answers or solutions. Blogs are one source, Safari Books Online another. Regardless of the source, the real cross-check is testing out whatever I've found. Bet I didn't make Wagner's cut if I was on his blogroll in the first place. He probably didn't like my Pepper Vodka Chicken recipe post. Heh.