I had a strange realization earlier today while perusing my news reader. I subscribe to about 150 RSS feeds, which means that at any given moment I have far more information to sift through than you could cram into any given Sunday edition of the New York Times. That said, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to try to isolate a handful of my most essential sources of information. The list that follows is a selection of what I consider to be some of the most consistent and unique online writing projects.

Architectradure is the project of Cati Vaucelle, a PhD candidate within MIT's Tangible Media Group. Vaucelle described herself as a "knowledge shopper" in an interview with Régine Debatty earlier this year. This playful take on design research shines through in the range of material Vaucelle examines with her blog. Physical computing, informatized industrial design, contemporary installation and design history are examined with an emphasis on usability and a sense of delight as to the way everyday objects can enrich our quality of life.

Design Observer features some of the most thoughtful writing on design culture that I've come across. The brainchild of Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand and Rick Poynor, Design Observer has been active since 2003. The project has opened up to host a number of other writers and while graphic design and typography dominate content, politics, media and sustainability often pop up as topics of discussion.

Generator.X — I've been a fan of software artist Marius Watz's work for years and had the opportunity to work with him when he contributed to Vague Terrain 03: Generative Art. Marius maintains one of the definitive online resources on software art. Generator.X often scoops other art blogs with in-depth reviews on exhibitions and projects the world over. The blog is absolutely on top of integrated audio-visual performance and of late has been covering the intersection of digital art and fabrication.

Grand Text Auto is a group blog that explores digital narrative in gaming, hypertext fiction and net art. The blog was launched in 2003 by Michael Mateas, Nick Montfort, Andrew Stern, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin who were later joined by Mary Flanagan and Scott Rettberg. Grand Text Auto's content stream combines dispatches from the front line of the indie gaming industry, critical perspective on a variety of games and news and commentary on the state of interactive fiction.

Networked Music Review is a subsidiary venture of the many-tentacled online arts promotion entity Turbulence. The blog deals with a wide range of adventurous musical performance and audio art and it dives right into the grey area between installation art and contemporary performance that most music publications simply aren't capable of addressing.

Mashable is on the verge of cracking the top ten most trafficked blogs on the internet and for good reason as it deals exclusively with social networking. Mashable features a dizzying amount of content, which reviews, gossips about and compares every social networking application currently in use or development. While a lot of this material can be written off as venture capital cheerleading, some of the pieces are very well written. Furthermore, the Mashable community is extremely knowledgeable and the discussion that occurs in response to some of the posts is quite stimulating.

TechPresident — Where would the blogosphere be without American politics? TechPresident is a non-partisan platform launched by Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry for analyzing how technology plays into the 2008 presidential election. The site features a play-by-play dissection of each of the potential nominees campaigns as well as a series of "alternate polls" which track the various Republican and Democratic contenders in terms of Facebook supporters, Myspace friends, and Youtube views. I find this site consistently delivers some of the most interesting commentary on the buildup to the 2008 election.

So there you have it. While these blogs only account for a small fraction of what I'm scanning on a daily basis, these writing projects truly stand out and always impress me with their unique perspective.