Last Friday I started a new secret project that has a lot of potential.  Basically frustrated by the way existing RSS aggregators - such as NewzCrawler or AmphetaDesk - work, I decided that it was time to roll my own.

If you aren't familiar with RSS Aggregators, you should get familiar.  Good web sites oftentimes publish an alternate version of their daily articles in a format called RSS (Rich Site Summary/Really Simple Syndication).  This alternate format allows machines to read the new text and parse it up to be presented in a different format.  With an RSS aggregator, you can take several of these RSS "feeds" and combine them into one page with just the latest news.  Since you are choosing the feeds, you only get news that interests you.  Depending on the feed aggregator, you might be able to filter news down even further, so you only ever read articles that are of direct interest to you.  Avoid information overload.

This new project in itself doesn't lend to the "Secret Project" status.  It's how the software works that makes it secret.  Moreover, I can safely say anything I want about many of its features (which compare to the aforementioned products) and still not reveal what makes this software more cool than the others like it.

Suffice to say that it takes RSS auto-discovery to a new level.  And if I follow the design in my head, it'll have a built-in full-featured web scraper for those sites that don't provide feeds.  I also intend for it to produce a newspaper-like format for display (like Google News), and Palm-friendly output for syncing with HandStory.  I already have algorithms worked out that do this to 80% satisfaction.

There will be some other tools, too, I expect.  I'm thinking to include some of the features of my HTTPTool program.  So it'll do whois queries on domains, and possibly provide Alexa-like related sites and/or DayPop/BlogDex references.

All of that sounds pretty cool, no?  And I still haven't given away the Big Feature(tm), which is already implemented in the system that I've put together over the weekend.  If you've seen it (not many have), you know it's darn cool.  Unfortunately, a screen shot would give away what the big deal is, so that won't be coming until the project nears completion.  That way, I can get a jump on any of my "competitors".

I think I may release the software as "cheapware" for about $5.  The unregistered version will put nags or ads in a very innovative and somewhat inconvenient place.  $5 is nothing to pay for what this thing can do, really.  If something like this already existed, I'd easily pay $25 for it.

Speaking of RSS Aggregators, I noticed that there is a Pro version of Trillian available.  Trillian rocks.  You should use it.