Friday May 7

Feedpapers

I have a request for those folks out there who are building RSS aggregation software (and there are many of you):

Take a look at this (NY Times), or this (Google News), or this (Wall Street Journal). Notice how these publications organize and present information. Things are categorized, emphasized, and visually distinct. That's because there is a human editor (or a smart algorithm) who thinks about how all of this news fits together. I enjoy reading my news in this way, whether on paper or the web.

Now, tell me, why doesn't your aggregation UI look anything like this? Why does every RSS aggregator out there give me a boring, flat list of articles. Why do you copy Outlook when you should be copying the NY Times? Maybe I'm wrong, and people prefer to read the news the same way they read e-mail. I don't...