NetNewsWire is great, but I have a wishlist…

• I want to be able to share my subscription list between machines

• The “aggregate new headlines” feature is nice, but I want to be able to aggregate more than one arbitrary group of subscriptions. You can almost do this by using folders, but not quite I think…

• I want some sort of adaptive filtering; by which I mean filters that I can teach by rating the items I read, giving them some sort of thumbs up or thumbs down to tell the filter whether I want to see similar items

Frequently Answered Questions

My friend Boah came up with the interesting concept of Frequently Answered Answers</a>. Now admittedly he may have been joking at the time, but that’s not really the point.

I like the idea of Frequently Answered Questions (as I prefer to call them). I think you should give them to people before you work with them. It’s like saying… “before you ask…”

This is an interesting interview with Ward Cunningham, talking about Wikis.

Although I’ve known they exist for a while, I’ve not really used them much. They seem like a great tool for collaboration, but whenever I’m pointed at one by somebody I invariably find myself totally baffled by the lack of structure, and struggle to find any useful information.

The interviewer seems to have the same problem, so I’m obviously not alone!

Aggrigators and Serendipity

I love NetNewsWire (and its ilk), but it occurs to me that serendipity is something that might be lost with RSS feeds, at least the way they are right now.

I am delighted not to be bombarded with adverts, but I used to enjoy catching sight of a book review on Slashdot that would otherwise have completely passed me by. Now that I am reading Slashdot via NetNewsWire, its not going to happen anymore. Of course there is probably some sort of RSS feed that will show me all the Slashdot book reviews, but that’s hardly the point is it?

Perhaps someone should extend the RSS format so that it can include “see also” items. Just as long as:

a) people don’t use them for adverts b) you can turn them off it people do use them for adverts ;)

Why is it that every time I manage to fish my iPod earphones out of my jacket/pocket/bag, I always end up holding the right earphone in my left hand? Why why why?