Library clips

Feed Digest is by far the one tool that is going to blow all the others away

I’ve been updating these two blog posts as new tools appear:
RSS: filter and re-mix
Re-syndication: sidebar updates and more

…but now the time has finally come where one tool does it all and does it well.

NOTE: Feed Digest is replacing the RSS Digest service.

First of all this is serious business, as you have to open an account before you start mixing, this account lists all your digests (great to keep track of the work you have been doing and to do any re-editing if necessary).

The free version currently offers 5 digests (12 feeds per digest)
The pro version currently offers 150 digests (100 feeds per digest)

Features

Output feeds to JAVA, HTML, PHP, even WAP, or as a clone feed (ie. a single feed - version of the native feed)…offering templates and full customisation

Single feed
This makes a clone or another version of the native feed (export into a box in a sidebar of a blog or into the body of a blog or website).

It seems you can choose titles only or description, but I don’t think full-text of items will be displayed…if you already use a full-text RSS feed on your blog this can be a way to have an alternate feed, as RSS summaries or RSS title…see more here.

Multi-feed (splicing up to 12 feeds in the free version)

Filter search terms in your digest
This seems to filter a search term across your whole digest…but what if you want to filter a search term in only one of the feeds in your digest…actually I guess you can make a single filtered feed, and then splice this feed with your other feeds into a Feed Digest.

Remove duplicates in the title or in the URL
This is a solution to my post where I was talking about duplicates in my RSS reader from the same search feeds from Topix, Google News, And Yahoo! News…even though each service indexes unique stories, a lot is duplication, which drives you round the bend.
Now I can splice 3 feeds into one (removing the duplicates) for each search query feed.

…more

There is also a suggestion service (feed discovery) in development which is very brave.
Type in a query and you will get results of the search term appearing in the title of a feed, as well as in the items of top feeds (a link next to each item asks “create a digest based on this feed”, of course)…this kinds of suggests that this is developing into an RSS directory/search engine of some sort.

The is a demo of a web zeitgeist of the world’s most linked to and popular Web pages (not sure what the sources are, but I guess they could be a digest of a simple spliced feed of del.icio.us popular and Technorati popular feeds-actually I’m not sure if there is a feed for Technorati Popular)…there is also another demo of a digest of a flickr search for sideburns (demonstrating images in digests)

There is a choice of buttons to celebrate Feed Digest

Plenty of communication: wiki, forums, blog

Future features

Send an email item to a digest
I think this means that you can add single items to your digest via email…so if you don’t want to add a feed to your digest because it only has relevant content some of the time, soon you will be able to email just the occasional item from a feed without having the feed as part of your digest
…this is almost like bookmarking content into your feed digest as you come across links you like
…if I’m correct this is good stuff!

Feed auto-discovery (attempts to find a feed for a given URL)

Statistics (see who has clicked where in your feed or digest, and where from)

Private feeds

Podcast feeds (get your feed in the right format instantly, and track your listeners)

Suggestions

Follow BlogBridge’s ingenuity and incorporate generating search feeds or SmartFeeds from the likes of Findory, Flickr, Technorati, del.icio.us and more…maybe this is a global digest.

Also to generate email subscriptions into RSS feeds as done by Bloglines.