Dreaming of Aggregators
Is there some kind of aggregator that enables the easy sharing of selected items in it or some easy way to share specific items in a feed with other people? A few members of the audience of the talk I gave in Wisconsin discussed the need for such software. Several of them already use a news reader as an easy way to find items of note for clients. They would like to be able to take this sharing one step further by either being able to flag items in the feed for particular colleagues or to snag an item out of an aggregator to send it via e-mail or post it on a weblog.
My ideal tool would allow several people access, like those on a network, while offering the ability for someone to flag items in the aggregator–perhaps with topic or person specific markers (folders, colored flags, text “Hey Lee, this is about that question you asked me,” etc.)–and delete others. While some people would like to be able to simply post the content to a weblog, a feature already available in some aggregators, it seems like one of the fundamental issues is simply pulling the content out of the aggregator or feed once it’s there and converting it into something that can be used in other ways. I would prefer something that’s not Web-based.
I tried isolating some items from various feeds in NetNewsWire, a desktop aggregator I use, but did not have complete success. It has a “blog this” feature, but it doesn’t work as I hoped it would with any of the software I have on my computer. I seem to remember that Onfolio offers saving and sharing similar to what we were talking about, but I can’t remember if it has an aggregator component or not.
In some of these cases, the librarian might play an administrative role in the aggregation. She might manage subscriptions and comb through the content daily, selecting items worth sharing. In others, she might be part of the group with access to the tool, but take a much less active role.
(*j pokes Shimon in the ribs. I hope you’re reading this.)
A setup that would be quite desirable is one similar to what the Frassle Studio used to allow when the aggregator was working. I said as much in my presentation. The aggregator manager, perhaps a librarian, can work behind the scenes receiving and culling information for clients. Frassle’s Studio, formerly known as the Publisher, gave someone the tools to do this work via one interface, then select items to highlight via particular Web pages. The manager can create pages for various purposes or specific people. A page can contain specific feeds, particular blog posts, lists of links, etc. What’s missing in it, besides the aggregator being offline, is some kind of automatic way to snag particular items from a feed. In Frassle, if my memory serves me correctly, someone would have to select the item, then manually go through the motions of posting it specifically to a page. Once the person is done with it, it would have to be manually removed. Having the program automatically delete something that’s been read would ease management.
I don’t know of a tool that does exactly what these people were talking about, which is one reason why I’m blogging about it. Maybe one of you can offer a suggestion.
