Comments on: FeedHub: HAL, er MAPE, Filters Your Feeds

By: Garrick Van Buren

Garrick Van Buren — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:21:02 +0000

Ed, you’re bringing up a number of fantastic points about the deficincies of today’s RSS readers.

By: Ed Kohler

Ed Kohler — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:06:25 +0000

Good point about the baked in nature of opt-in RSS feeds. But what about this: I currently have 125 unread articles in my reader. Let’s say I only have 10 minutes to catch up on on my feeds. How can I sort this unread content to make the most of my 10 minutes?

I’d also like a reader with a mobile version that will automatically hold back posts with audio or video since I can’t process them on my Treo. Today, I star them to watch later, but it would be better if I never saw them at all on my phone.

By: Garrick Van Buren

Garrick Van Buren — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:37:27 +0000

Ed, That’s fair. I have a pet peeve about sign-in/registration processes that get in their own way. I shouldn’t have let that frustration bleed over into speculation.

Also, I think interestingness can work for RSS – in fact, I’ll argue it’s already baked in. (You read feeds, and blog what’s interesting to you, I to the same, etc).

By: Ed Kohler

Ed Kohler — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:21:59 +0000

Now your last sentence of your last comment seems unfair. It seems like a slippery slope dismissal of the entire service based on your experience with their registration process – a process one only would need to do once, and a process people would likely put up with if they heard the service was awesome enough to overcome the registration hurdles.

Of course, they could improve the service that’s been live to 2-weeks as well.

I don’t know if the service is any good. I haven’t tried it.

Can interestingness work for RSS? I could see popular feed sorting based on how many others have starred, emailed, linked to, or clicked through on the same stories in their readers. And the same rules could be used to sort lower volume feeds based on individual user’s behavior. Would that work? Perhaps. However, I can’t say that I have a burning desire for such a service.

By: Garrick Van Buren

Garrick Van Buren — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 04:06:08 +0000

Ed, thanks. Looks like we need to bring back the blink tag for me – cause I missed the message about waiting during the setup process.

The signup/login experience can be handled much, much better across the board. If something as common place as opening the door is this frustrating, what else is?

By: Ed Kohler

Ed Kohler — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:42:53 +0000

It looks like both you and Scoble reviewed a service that explicitly says it takes time to generate the results it’s promised. That seems unfair to the service.

The login issue you experienced sounds lame, but that’s a one-time thing so doesn’t say much about the value of the service overall.