Re: [syndication] Re: RSS feed filtered by keywords?

["Bill Kearney" <ml_yahoo@ideaspace.net>]

> Ok I at least see your point ... your operating on different assumption
> than am I ... so at first I couldn't even see what your were saying.
> I'm assuming that there are a group of feeds that you always read ...
> your friends, your business associates, your personal network,  people
> who have given you reliable or interesting information in the past.  You
> will probably want to read every item in those feeds  .. or at least be
> presented with every item.  But if you rely on that as your only source
> of items, you will miss too much.   That is where keyword filtering
> comes into play.  You apply the filters to the *entire river* of
> information to discover new sources.

Well, you're halfway there.  I'm saying keyword filtering alone is a flawed
idea.  I suspect we agree in this regard.  I do recognize that keywords is where
we're going to have to start.  I just don't want to see them being viewed as
anything other than a bad hack.

> Oh really ?   Can you read all the items in all the feeds in one day ?

Ah, do I need to?  Or do I take advantage of a larger network of what my peers
discover?  I'm telling you, this is going to be much more valuable than trying
to make each person 'hyper informed'.

> If you store all the items from all the feeds that you have discovered
> (regardless of whether those feeds have ever contained an item that
> interests you) just how big and how fast will that database grow?  You
> are one of the few people in the world that I think could actually give
> us a reasonably accurate answer to that question.

Heh, yes the Syndic8 and other projects give me a pretty big picture.  There
are, at any given time, about 150k items in a day's feeds.  Something like 80mb,
IIRC.  It's not a massive amount.  It is just text after all and compresses to
considerably less.  But it /is/ a lot of items.  And yes, it is tough to "find"
the needle in the haystack.

> I agree, but that assumes that you have already built up such a network.
>  Many people have not, or are in the process of switching from one
> network to another.  How are they to *rapidly* get oriented in a new
> network ?

Whoa there, the point may not be to drag them into the mudpile and make them use
the existing networks.  The point may be to create new networks that don't
involve slogging through the mud.

This why I came up with the idea of web-based shared subscription lists.  To be
able to use an online database (in this case Syndic8) to store the lists helps
in managing the massive amount of feeds.  You can then tell your reader program
to download from it.  That way more than one program can use the lists (home,
office, portable, etc).  These lists default to being private.  To get to the
next level it becomes worth sharing these lists.  That way you can see what
others are reading.  And as more people make their lists *programmatically*
accessible it'll be possible for software to start helping them see the bigger
pictures.

-Bill Kearney