News Aggregation.

Why it matters.

One of my favorite Radio features is its news feed aggregator. Radio goes from your desktop to web sites around the world, checking for and picking up headlines and articles from newspapers, weblogs, and other web sites. Some services, like NewsIsFree and the fee-based NewsKnowledge.com and YellowBrix run directories of feeds.

A software standard, RSS, makes it easy to do. Each source is represented by a file listing the latest headlines and a description of each story. That file has a URL, you tell Radio about it (copy url and paste), Radio checks it and, as the source updates, shows the new stories on a local News page.

So, when I copy http://www.newsisfree.com/HPE/xml/newchannels.xml, switch windows, paste it into my Subscriptions page and push the Add button, I get

Congratulations, you have successfully subscribed to the "News Is Free: Recent Additions" feed. It now appears in your subscriptions list below; new items will appear on the News page every hour.

Your own custom news portal.

Browsable news, pushed to you in a local database, without cluttering your mailbox.

Better than bookmarks, it is a memory tool for me, with active follow-up.

Addictive.

Goals for improvement.

I subscribe to more than 400 sources. More than I can read in a day. What improvements to Radio can help me manage my news hunger?

A few goals:

• Help important info float to the top. Important to me.
• Help me feel in control of my feeds.
• Help me manage the life cycle of a feed. Feeds go from (a) subscription to (b) active use to (c) secondary use to (d) retirement.
• Help me get the most value from my existing feeds. I was going to say "suck the marrow" from my subscriptions but my vegetarian friends came to mind.
• Help me maneuver through my personal news space my way. Understand how I work a queue, handle interruptions, delegate and refer, find my way back to interesting posts, annotate, and manipulate.

Ideas.

So here are a few ideas along these lines. Send more to Blue Sky Radio .

• Search through aggregated news feeds.
• The list of feeds should show how many articles are pending.
• Feeds should be in groups.
• Tell me more about each feed.
  • Queue. How many posts are waiting for me to read?
  • Gaps. Have there been interruptions in my subscription?
  • Periodicity. I check every hour and sometimes see an updated file. Given that, how often does this feed update?
  • Really Read. What percent of the time have I actually read posts from this feed as a percent of the number of posts.
  • Description. Show the latest feed description. For instance, The Shifted Librarian's xml feed says "Shifting libraries at the speed of byte! My name is Jenny, and I'll be your information maven today."
  • Others who like this feed. List sites that cite this feed, perhaps via blogdex, daypop or google. Maybe I will subscribe to them too or communicate with them.
• Prioritize feeds.
  • Some feeds are worth more to me than others. Right now the choice is all or nothing.
  • How about my giving an explicit A/B/C rating? Alpha feeds show up first. Side benefit: We can share and compare ratings, leading to "If you liked/disliked those feeds, you might like these."
• Feedbags.
  • Group feeds. Each feed can belong to one or more feedbags.  
  • Group view. View/edit groups on different pages. Like a newspaper, I can see setting up feed bags for technology, local news, friends.
  • Prioritize Feedbags.
  • Share Feedbags.
  • Subscribe to Feedbags.

feed·bag   n. A bag that fits over a horse's muzzle and holds feed. Also called nosebag.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
 

State of the Art.

Two Tools making great progress:

• Mark Paschal's Kit. "A suite of "page tools" to enhance your Radio experience." Includes a form for searching through news. You can color code feeds and drop them into categories.
   
• Mikel Maron's newsViews. "Aggregate your news in Categories, for easy Viewing."

Further Reading:

• Radio Documentation on Reading News.
• Information overload in blogspace. Starting from Jenny the Shifted Librarian's observations.
• Rick Klau's Aggregator Improvements.
• Multi-authored Weblogs with Radio. They use the news aggregator to create a synthetic feed. Some ideas on where this should go.  

"Preferences > Templates >Customized images. Radio UserLand pre-defines images used for permanent links, and source and enclosure icons. You can use the settings on this page to specify any images you want. These settings are preserved with Themes you create."

Here are more images I'd like to specify.

Meaning Icon xml feed RSS .92 xml>radio coffee mug xml>amphetaDesk xml>Headline Viewer feedback email envelope Radio I/O opml coffee cup       courtesy NewsIsFree:   email this to a friend Post to radio Post to manila Post to blogger

I also want graphics for:

• print this page
• about me
• my CV or resume
• contact me
• IM me
• my face: thumbnail and portrait
• alternate language versions/translations, especially flags for English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, and Portuguese (the google versions for 2002).

 What other ?