The highest priority feeds are run through an RSS to IM/SMS alert system. I use Zaptxt and it gets me lots of stories – before other people get to them.

No matter what field you work in, I believe that being among the first to know about key information can provide a huge competitive advantage.

There are many services that provide this kind of functionality.

You should give some thought to what you would benefit from getting this kind of notification about.

Once or twice a day I load up my Google Reader app, which I set up as a standalone “single app browser” using FluidApp.com. I try to always read every new item in my “vendors” folder and then I scan what I can from everything else. I oversubscribe, prioritize, read what I can and believe that subscription means there is some chance I’ll see things – not subscribing means there is dramatically less opportunity for me to see the news in a particular feed.

For the same reason, I also put the feeds in my Netvibes page into Snackr.net – an Adobe AIR based RSS ticker. It runs at the bottom of my page throughout the day, giving me something to scan while pages load, etc. I regularly find important news stories here.

I’ve loaded 5 or 10 feeds into the Gmail “web clips” feature so I can increase the chance that I might see some of the items that come through those feeds.

I put a link to Netvibes in my browser toolbar and click it about once an hour. These are high priority feeds that I want to keep an eye on throughout the day.

They include things like

• 1.) Competitors
• 2.) Manually created feeds for special circumstances and
• 3.) Groups of feeds spliced together.

Netvibes also has a very good mobile version, m.netvibes.com, so I can check these same feeds on my phone.