Comments for RSS filter products

RSS filter products

2006-04-02T22:06:03Z

Filtering is one of my hot topics in 2006. It's the next step from aggregation, because many of us now have too much information coming at us. Let's face it, even with your favourite blogs or websites, you don't want to read every single post or article that is published. You ideally want to filter every piece of information that comes at you, based on your niches and personal topics of interest. This is why I've been tracking the development of RSS filter products - and indeed trying (unsuccessfully) to develop one of my own.

FeedRinse is an interesting attempt, enabling you to "rinse" your feeds by keyword, author, tag. It also has a profanity filter. To get started, you sign up and import your OPML - or filter individual feeds. Where FeedRinse's model comes slightly unstuck is that you're required to export your filtered feeds, so you can add them into your RSS Reader. This seems like a step too much for me, as I'd prefer to do my filtering and reading from the same service.

I asked Aaron Mentele from FeedRinse about this. He replied:

"The current readers on the market are pretty early in development, and there are definitely some specific ways to improve them (we're addressing that). But, we're focusing on the big item first: allowing the end-user to determine what they want to receive. We see the core product as a pass-through service that will help regardless of device, reader, etc.

What we're focusing on right now is improving the filter options as well as allowing the user to create relevant content channels. These features will integrate directly with the filtering options (that's what the mysterious "Smart aRSS" feature is all about)."

OK, so I see the value in focusing on getting the filtering technology right first - before doing an integrated filter/reader product. I'll be keeping an eye on FeedRinse's progress. Also check out TDavid's review.

NB: there's a similar product just released called ZapTXT - which seems more like a search subscription service a la PubSub. ZapTXT "allows you to define search criteria for your RSS feeds and then notifies you via email, SMS or IM when a new entry contains your search keywords."

Comment from Murray on 2006-04-02

2006-04-03T00:18:21Z

I am finding Findory to be a very good and easy to use news filter.

By the way hows Michael Arringtons House 2.0?

Comment from Pito Salas on 2006-04-02

2006-04-03T03:22:19Z

Many feed aggregators (including www.blogridge.com) have some variant of a Smart Feed, where you can create a synthetic feed based on a query against one or more feeds -- modeled for example just after iTunes Smart Playlists. I am not sure what the advantage is here...

Comment from Aaron Mentele on 2006-04-02

2006-04-03T04:31:30Z

Feed Rinse now generates an OPML Reading List which allows you to subscribe directly to your feeds. So if you use a feed reader that supports reading lists, you don't have to export/import at all. This is a small addition since we first talked - more seemless reading is in the works. Hope your move went well.

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2006-04-02

2006-04-03T04:56:19Z

Thanks for the update Aaron! Pito, I'll check out Blogbridge again, because that functionality interests me a lot.

btw people, the previous post was an April Fool's joke - I haven't moved to the US. :-)

Comment from Gavin on 2006-04-02

2006-04-03T05:49:47Z

As a relative newbie to Feeds, I'm finding them way more annoying than useful. I find it takes me too long to look through all the not-so-interesting feeds that most of the feed readers I've tried drop on me and eventually just sends me back to my bookmarks.

However, I do like the idea of discovering new blogs/websites via a Feedreader. One thing I'd like to see implemented on Feed readers (and it may already exsist) is the idea a Feed playlist. Essentially, these are the Feeds that this particular user is reading. That way if Richard wants to share his Feed Reader-readlist, I can see where he's getting his news from and select what I like and don't like. Also, this could speed up and hone in the process of Feed sorting which is definitely not how I'd like to spend an afternoon.

Is something similiar to that what the rest of you are talking about in the comments? If not, who wants to implement it?

Comment from Pierre on 2006-04-03

2006-04-03T07:46:47Z

Maybe you could also check atiki.com ?
It's a good filter as well, and relaunched this morning (still a few bugs here and there to be corrected today)

Comment from Kevin Burton on 2006-04-03

2006-04-03T09:49:17Z

Hey...

Tailrank's memetracker personalization is actually called "My News Filter" and has a similar concept. Basically you upload your OPML and we can build you a custom feed. You can even dock this back into your RSS aggregator if you want.

Let me know if you have any questions...

Kevin

Comment from Peter Cooper on 2006-04-03

2006-04-03T12:36:46Z

FeedDigest has had filtering for about nine months now, but it's really for republishing/filtering to a Web site rather than reading in a feed reader (although if you're into 'river of news' you can subscribe to a single aggregated RSS feed based on your query).

Comment from Adham Shaaban on 2006-04-04

2006-04-05T01:14:45Z

Hi Gavin,

I'm actually working with a friend of mine on an idea very close to what you described and we're hoping to have a beta available "RealSoonNow" :) It's called FeedScreen (http://www.feedscreen.com) and it will allow you to monitor keywords of interest and get email notifications when they're found in your feeds. But more importantly it will let you see what feeds/keywords other users are screening if they choose to share this info. It's sort of feed filtering meets social bookmarking. We think it's a very useful tool and we hope others will find it so too.

Thanks,
Adham