ReadWriteWeb

ReadBurner was an RSS aggregator service which displayed the most popular URLs at any given time based on how many people had shared them through Google Reader's Shared Items. To much disappointment, the site shut its doors last month, when the site's owner Alex Marktl could no longer make time to work on it. However, shortly after ReadBuner closed, Adam Ostrow, of Mashable, along with Drew Olanoff (former technology evangelist at Pluggd) and Thomas Connors acquired ReadBurner with plans to bring it back online. Today, ReadBurner is back and brings with it several new features, too.

Over the weekend, it seemed that everyone in the tech blogosphere contributed to the discussion around fractured blog comments; Robert Scoble even went so far as to say that the "era of blogger's control" is over. What all these discussions hinged on was whether or not a web service called Shyftr had the right to appropriate bloggers' RSS feeds and build their brand around our content (a practice they've now modified due to this outcry).

We've seen a lot of new aggregation services and lifestreaming applications come into play recently, and we've questioned whether they're adding to the conversation or just adding to our information overload. (See our coverage on FriendFeed, for example). And today, MyBlogLog even added even more lifestreams to subscribe to.

The truth of the matter is, like it or not, the conversations that once existed solely in the blogosphere have now moved on. People still comment, but in a lot of cases, those comments aren't on found on the blog itself. So the question is, has the conversation become diluted among all the different services and applications? Or is it just adding layers to the original topic? And most importantly, how can you keep up?

Blog-centric social network MyBlogLog, which just a few weeks ago added lifestreaming to their app, is today launching a new feature that aggregates lifestreams across the network by topic. The streams are presented in reverse chronological order. It feels a little like Technorati's ill-conceived Topics feature, but for all user activity rather than strictly blog posts.

Ten years ago today Jason Kottke launched his influential blog Kottke.org. The site is a fascinating collection of...whatever Kottke cares to post there.

So prescient was his vision of the future of publishing though that today he's married to the co-founder of Blogger.com and can be counted among the earliest pioneers in the present era of online bricolage - the art of assembling diverse found objects.