Wanted: Gluttonous RSS Feeders. Using MySQL and PHP, I'm cobbling together a server-based RSS aggregator/publisher that makes it insanely fast to skim feeds, choosing items for publication without much descriptive text or editing. The code makes use of two terrific open source PHP projects: the Magpie RSS and Atom parser and Edd Dumbill's XML-RPC for PHP.
Erik Thauvin uses this approach on Linkblog, checking a mind-boggling 1,600 feeds for technology and programming links and choosing the best 15-20 items each day. His site has quickly become a favorite.
Although I'm not going to adopt this format on Workbench -- I write like someone who gets paid by the word -- when you read Thauvin's description of his editing process, it becomes clear that he's practicing a specialized form of weblogging that could benefit from its own tools.
As I explain this concept to people, I've dubbed this kind of site a passalong, because the point is to scan lots of syndicated feeds and pass along the best links quickly.
For the most part, existing weblogging software is designed under the assumption that users write about everything they link. Radio UserLand can route individual items from the aggregator to an editor, but this wasn't simple enough for the process I have in mind:
- Scan a headlines page, selecting items that sound interesting. Click Submit to put them all on a queue.
- Skim the queue, which adds item descriptions, and visit links. Select items that should be dropped from the queue, then click Submit to dump them.
- Publish the queue once an hour (in my case, using the MetaWeblog and Movable Type APIs to send items over XML-RPC to a Movable Type weblog).
The software needs a lot of work -- there's no editor yet, and I want a Bayesian filter that can guess which new headlines I'm most likely to read -- but I'm jazzed about the potential.
With thousands of information sources producing RSS and Atom feeds, we need people like Thauvin who have integrated weblogging into their daily news-gathering routine. Weblog links are like ant trails -- a lot of people have to link to something good in order to get noticed.
Though my original plan was to design this for personal use, if there's interest, I'll add user account support and make the code available for beta testing. Pass it along. [Workbench]
8:55:28 AM 
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