or: RSS feeds, meet social networking.

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The first RSS readers in the market were desktop-based, you had to install in your computer to use it. Luckily, right after that, a lot of RSS readers started popping up on the web. Better for the users: it allow us to manage our reading list any place we have internet access, and not just on our computers.
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Sadly, the web-based RSS feeds still inherits a lot of desktop-based limitations, and below I tell how - with only two or three conceptual changes - those services can use the web to build a social network around it, creating a more useful system for the users and bloggers alike.

Reblog

• double filtering: add a “share” button below each post, and educate the users of its capabilites
• promote: make the shared page open by default, and allow users to promote it (invitations, badges, etc.)
• organization: allow tagging, even pre-populate fields if possible
• personal touch: allow users to add personal notes above the reblogged post
• bottom-up popular news: cluster tags in groups, create thematic pages (family, tech, politics, arts) with it. allow RSS feeds. allow rerebloging. rinse and repeat.

Great minds think alike

• favorites: open users’ subscription list to visitors
• reading habits: open reading trends, too
• profile: add subscription list + reading trends in a neat profile page, a la last.fm
• blog metrics: create blog profiles also, with global reading habits
• bragging rights: create blog metrics badges, invite blog authors to the party
• Nobody is an island: !important! mine the now open subscription list + reading trends, suggest new posts and blog subscriptions based on user trends, “people that read that blog also reads…”

Couch potato

for god’s sake, someone please create a remote controlled, full-screen RSS feed app. RSS reading touches the same neurons as tv-zapping, and I’d love to unglue my face from the computer screen, once in a while.

• desktop-based interface for the web-based RSS service, optimized for distant viewing (big fonts + simple, intuitive navigation)
• interface allows for reading, sharing, and basic tagging (if)
• controls multimedia posts (youtube videos, audio posts, etc)
• plugin for popular remote controlled apps: front row, apple tv, windows media player, mythtv

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This idea is free as a bird, go along and create it, and let us know. You don’t have to hire me to help you out (tho that would be nice, and i’d love to), but attribution is obligatory.

i’m itching to find an illustration project to do… till then, I’m drawing just for myself.
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and you, dear reader! and you! < :˜-)
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NYT blogs
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that blogs are gatekeepers to the “free for all” web - filtering content that interests your group - we already know.
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so how about a filter for the NYT articles? well, they have: top 25 most emailed articles. it’s bottom-up, it’s the créme de la créme.
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too bad that if it starts to be a regular page for many readers, in the end it will behave like a self-fulilling profecy (the more people talk about an article, well, the more people talk about an article, in a neverending loop).
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the NYT system already knows who am I (i gotta register to read it online, right?), so they could make a “people who read this article also read”, amazon-like feature. that would pulverize the power curve away to a lot of communities/clusters.
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which brings me the question: do they want to break the mass readership into clusters? do they care?

da dinâmica dos gases e do padrão de vida
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relembrando um pouco de física da escola: sólidos ocupam um espaço fixo, líquidos se adaptam ao recipiente, com um limite em sua elasticidade. gasosos ocupam todo o espaço disponível, independente do volume.
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padrão de vida se comporta como um gás, portanto. não importa o quanto você tenha, o quanto você sue, it’s never enough. você está sempre no limite, sentindo a pressão.
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que isso seja causado pela cultura consumista (que sublimou nossos earnings, o fato é que é too late to discuss o motivo, estou apenas expressando um fato.
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aqui em nyc, o espaço de liberdade dos gases é bem maior que o do rio. e a pressão pelo consumo (que nada mais é que a pressão pela superespecialização de um determinado estilo de vida, sorry e vc segue o que os outros dizem pra vc fazer) obviamente vai crescer, então estou tentando dirigir o fluxo.
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se no rio eu tinha que picaretar por uma edição de insira-qualquer-obcessão-aqui, aqui eu tenho não apenas a edição normal, tradepaperback, action figure, interruptor de parede, readers guide, livro de frases, postcards, adesivos, bobbleheads, filme, livro, camisa, pin, etc do supracitado insira-qualquer-obcessão-aqui.
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em uma, comvém um ajuste fino do que se quer, uma maior exigência no que se procura, antes que se caia no truque maior da sociedade do espetáculo: quando sua identidade não está mais em si, mas numa peça numa vitrine que enquanto vc não puder comprar, ficará incompleto.
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o que eu quero eu sei. japanese-pop-kawaii-weird, graças a deus que não tenho grana (não me pagaram na empresa, há!) justamente no período de entresafra.

i know i’ll loose a lot of readers with this shift… but the narrowcasting rule still apllies. i was postponing this decision for a long time and it has to be done, sorry.

ooohh, enough whining!