Birthing the Ultimate Feed Reader

 posted Saturday, July 15, 2006 at 1:04 am MST

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Birthing the Ultimate Feed Reader

 posted Saturday, July 15, 2006 at 1:04 AM MST

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Joining a merry band congregated around the "The “river” versus “folder” RSS approach" discussion in the Scobleizer blog (John Robb; Aaron B. Hockley; Brian Sullivan; Dave Coustan; John Stanforth; Craig Barnes; with Dave Winer as eminence grise / rabble-rouser; [checkout one response]) , Jay Gilmore rang my bell with this bit:

"I had tried browser extensions and then switched to the feed reading support in Thunderbird but became frustrated with a lack of control of my feed appearance."

This corresponds to my impression. He then continues in his own blog with Destination: World Class by Jay Gilmore ? Feed Reader Search Topic Wavelength:

"My own experience using most online tools—not just feed readers—is that they are slow and changing settings is often takes two to three times as many steps vs. a standalone application."

"In Search of a Desktop Feed Reader Client" is a fuller treatment of that subject.

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I was tired when I wrote my contribution in Scobleizer and I nearly wrote W=V/Q ... meh ... tired now!*

"*What I was writing originally triggered such profound proprietary instincts in me that those waves caused FF1.5 to lock up hard and I had to abort. Not j/k!*

W=Q/V ... what something is worth depends on how much of it there is and how fast it's moving, did I recall my Economics 12?

Cognitive ergonomics: there's no way I'm going to put up with being pained repeatedly and frequently ... unless there's a payoff. (Cost/benefit, yes?) If each of a long series of teeny actions bothered us a teeny little bit then we'd prolly be really futzy and reactionary. *looks around* Yaa, like this.

Pleasure is Web2.0; elegant, responsive ... and intelligent.

I doubt that "rivers" and "folders" are actually orthogonal, strictly speaking ... but dang near!

*It's paradigmatic, my dear Watson!*

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Kevin Marks' "Searching a River of News" in the technorati blog responds very neatly:

"Dave, do try out Technorati Favorites It will import your OPML, and lets you restrict searches to your favorite blogs, as well as showing a river of news."

(No comment function in that blog ... tsk-ktsk-ktsk!)

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Niall Kenedey's ''Feeds as a Platform'' is one of a nice series.

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