Diego's posting on aggregators cites Dave Winer and Adam Curry on aggregators. After looking at Diego's screenshots, it seems to me that Clevercactus looks a lot like , except that FeedDemon can do a newspaper, and Clevercactus can't, and Clevercactus has PIM info, which FeedDemon doesn't.

No sooner did Chuq finish with e-mail, but then he turned his attention to advertising in RSS. A lot of what he says resonates with me. Partially it resonated with me because I was flipping through the September 2003 Fast Company while taking a break. Seth Godin's column (sorry, too early for a link), is titled "Contempt of Consumer: It's a Real Crime". In a nutshell, its about how companies don't respect their customers anymore, and of course, it cites spam as an example. It struck me that they way Lockergnome's client wants to use RSS isn't very respectful either. They just want to cram stuff down my throat. They don't want to cultivate a relationship with me. I'd be happy to subscribe to RSS feeds regarding products that I had purchased. Key phrase: "I subscribe". If the company could use that feed to deliver real value (not just junk) then it would go a long way toward building a relationship with me.

Companies don't get it anymore. You respect me. I learn to trust you. When I trust you, I keep buying from you. If I really trust you, I go out of my way to buy from you. I recommend you to my friends. But if you don't respect me? I had a telemarketer persistently call me about fixing my unbroken auto glass. I finally told him, "I know your company's name very well now. I'll be sure that I go anywhere except to you when my auto glass needs fixing". I told a Qwest telemarketer I wasn't interested. She climbed down my throat, asking me angrily "Didn't I want to save money?". I told her that if it meant having to deal with her, that I'd rather pay more. These companies are doing themselves a world of hurt, and they don't even know it.

One of the feeds that I subscribe to is More Stuff 4 Less Bargain Blog. I would *never* opt in to a mailing list like this, because in an hour I'll be getting spam from all over. But I can watch the feed, and if something looks good, I can act on it. (Note: I have not yet purchased anything via these folks, but I like them, because they get it). This is another song that has the same refrain: "If you don't have an RSS feed, you don't exist".

Chuq is on a tear. Ben Hyde posted Chuq's article on quiet voices in groups to the ASF members list. To say that the ASF is a mailing list culture is like saying the Chinese like to eat rice. We have mailing lists for everything, and frequently the solution proposed to a problem is to create yet another mailing list. Chuq's idea for using multiple mailing lists as multiple rooms in a house during a cocktail party is intriguing. In the social software realm, we're in need of this kind of innovative thinking just as badly as we are in need of new and cool software.

Compliments are always nice...

I was looking over the referrer logs, when I realized that I was getting a bunch of hits via Technorati. Turns out that I made the Interesting Newcomers list yesterday. That was nice. It was also nice to discover the Interesting Newcomers and Interesting Blogs RSS feeds. Should be a good source of new blogs. Of course, that raises the question: how do blogs leave my aggregator. Some blogs just have petered out and there haven't been postings in a while. Others are still going, but I just don't read them. I'd like the ideal microcontent client to present a list of blogs which haven't produced anything interesting in a while, so I can remove them if I want to.

The Technorati listing was nice, but it's nothing personal, it's just doing tha math. However, Gordon Weakliem paid me a very nice compliment. Of course, I might be the only person in his aggregator, but it's nice to get a personal message. I'll try to keep things interesting for you, Gordon.

[via the Debian Weekly News]: The zeroconf project at SourceForge is aimed a providing Zeroconf / Rendezvous for Unix and Linux users.