You have to be very careful when you choose your “tools of the trade”. These days one of the most important activity is the aggregation of relevant informations. I’m talking about feeds. Think of an aggregator as your daily newspaper… but filled with sources you selected.
An aggregator or news aggregator is a type of software that retrieves syndicated Web content that is supplied in the form of RSS and other XML feeds, and that are published by weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites.
Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites of interest for updates, creating a unique information space or “personal newspaper.” An aggregator is able to subscribe to a feed, check for new content at user-determined intervals, and retrieve the content.
Thanks to the WikiPedia
One of the best aggregators out there is without a doubt BlogBridge
This slooooooow “Java cross platform” software is definitely one of the most advanced. Oh… did I say that it’s terribly sloooooow?
Why the hell should you want a slow software then? Because it can handle stuff no other competitor can. It can handle synchronization between computers for example: let’s say you install the most recent Weekly Build on your laptop and on your Dekstop. How do you manage to stay in synch with what you read here and what you’ve read there? BlogBridge provides a simple, free service to stay synched. You only have to provide the username and the password and you’re done. Items are automatically synched on start/shutdown. To me this feature alone is well worth the price of the… hey… what the hell??? This software is free! Woah…
Another great feature is the smart OPML synch called Reading Lists.
When creating a BlogBridge Guide, you can now include a link to a list of Feeds which someone else is maintaining, as OPML of course. With Reading Lists we support a new way to share knowledge: Reading Lists become assets which can be shared, published and have value. A set of recommendations that can be freely shared.
Let’s say you wanna read the Web 2.0 Workgroup feeds. All of them. And that you wanna be aware of changes in the group (such as whenever a new site joins the workgroup or another one leaves). Well then, you only need to import the OPML from the url of the site and BlogBridge will automatically start retrieving the feeds. Adding and deleting the channels based on what the actual remote OPML file says.
Go at the BlogBridge site and read more about the Reading List Support.
New features includes
- Significant improvements in two computer synchronization
- Tools/Keyboard Shortcuts to easily document our shortcuts requested by many users
- Ability to turn off the Toolbar totally, requested by some users with smaller screens
- Alert the user if they subscribe to a Feed that they are already subscribed to, also requested by many users
- Wildcard support in SmartFeeds
By the way, I’m talking about the Weekly Build and not the stable one you can download using the “download” button. Give it a try.
You can read an interesting overview/review of BlogBridge on ottergroup.com. Nice screenshots there too.
