With anticipation and interest I’ve been watching Kent Newsome’s Swivel Feeds project where he has been asking people in his reading list to recommend their five favorite blogs. It seems my number has come up in the final list and I’m happy to make some recommendations.

I’m going to recommend five blogs I’m pretty certain he isn’t currently following (they aren’t on his list anyway). These aren’t necessarily my most favorite blogs, so hopefully people not mentioned who are in my reading list and not on Kent’s won’t feel slighted, but these are blogs that I think Kent might enjoy. I’ll also tell him and you why.

TV in Japan (RSS) - a consistently enjoyable feed that includes interesting, bizarre, weird and sometimes downright hilarious clips taken from real television shows in Japan. I know Kent uses Bloglines and most these clips are posted through YouTube so I think he’ll be able to receive these without conflict (he’s mentioned hassles with videos in his Bloglines feeds in the past). The videos vary in length but are often only a few minutes in length. You can skim the titles for the ones of most interest.

Macenstein (RSS) - On the off chance that Kent might want to keep up with the Mac side of things from a Mac blogger with some real personality then look no further than “Dr.” Macenstein. Although I’ve been reading this feed for a little while I don’t know much about the good Mac doctor except that he probably isn’t a real doctor. Maybe a doctor of love, if you go by the Mac chick of the month layouts he fondly publishes. No nudes, it’s mostly worksafe, so hopefully Kent’s better half doesn’t get bothered by this suggestion (hey, boys will be boys!). Expect a healthy dose of Microsoft bashing, but also the spirited Apple rant, which is kind of unusual for a Mac blog. This is a good blog from a unique voice in the Macworld (pun intended).

Contest Blogger (RSS) - awhile back I suggested to Kent one way to increase his readership (see how to spend $1,000 promoting your blog) would be to allocate some money towards running some contests. One good blog to follow different possible contests you can not only get your blog(s) involved with but also get some ideas for possible contests to run your own is Contest Blogger. Run by Phil Van Treuren, a jack of many trades, I think Kent will find this feed helpful on a number of levels. At the very least it will get his mind clicking, whirring and rocking — and that’s well worth the price of subscribing.

Free iTunes downloads (RSS) - I’m not sure how Kent feels about iTunes as a music player, but I do know he enjoys music. And who doesn’t like free? The Free iTunes downloads has a sole mission: tell you what’s free in the Apple iTunes store so you can go download it. Maybe it’s the pilot episode for a TV show or a music track. Yeah, it’s all DRM-infested, which probably makes it a little less desirable, but this is a lot easier way to keep up with the free content in the iTunes store than visiting the store (pay attention Apple). Word of caution: these downloads are sometimes very time sensitive, so you’ll want to jump on over and get them right away, Kent, if they are of interest.

Gullible.info (RSS) - like most bloggers, I consider most .info domains to be splog-infested trash, but fortunately Gullible.info isn’t one of them. This feed will inject some fun “facts” (note, they are bogus, see domain title) into Kent’s reading list once or twice a week like:

“During their heyday in the United States, there were more people with Police records than police records. Due to the advent of CDs and the increase in crime, that has not been the case since 1989.”

These fast “facts” might make good filler to go with some of Kent’s roundup posts, appropriately linked of course, but no worries there because Kent is one of the best bloggers out there about making sure others get proper credit where due.

More enjoyable feeds?
I hope you enjoy these Kent and readers looking for good reads. I’ll say it again proudly: I do.

Do you have a really good blog you think I should be reading? Here’s how to suggest a feed to me in an effective and well-received way:

1. Just leave good quality, relevant comments on any post here (not about your site recommendation, but about the post) and
2. put your link in the signature space

I subscribed to two blogs yesterday from bloggers who have left good quality comments here. While I don’t promise to subscribe to every blog from every commenter listed in the signature space, at the very least I will personally follow your link and check out your blog — or your suggested blog, if it leads to a third party site.

Another way to get my attention is to use a two-way trackback. See one of the 4,400+ posts here you’d like to blog about? Just write your blog post, link to the post here and send a trackback ping. I follow all those links too. Who knows, maybe the next time, if Kent makes this Swivel Feeds recommendation request again, I’ll be recommending one of your blogs.

Thank you for reading.

Update 9/28/07 5:08am PST: Updated “facts” for Gullible.info to make sure it was clear these weren’t really facts at all. The joke is all in the domain title, folks.

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