RSS Mixer - Combines Feeds for iPhone, Web, and Apple Widgets
July 19th, 2007 by Jim SpadacciniOur latest prototype, RSS Mixer, is now available. This is by far the most elaborate of the prototypes we’ve been working on over the last few months. All of these experimental applications are part of a larger project that we are developing for release in 2008.
RSS Mixer allows you to combine various feeds into a new one that can be viewed as RSS, HTML, an iPhone page, as well as a Web and Apple Dashboard Widget.
The design is simple: you can create a title for your custom RSS mix and you can add up to ten feeds in the form. A listing of recent mixes, along with a few featured ones, is also included. This prototype (and the others) was programmed using Ruby on Rails.
Each custom mix includes Widgets, an iPhone formatted version, and links to the various feeds in the mix. Below are some links to a custom mix called Environmental News.
Take a look at the site and let us know what you think.
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:00 am
[…] A screen capture from RSS MIxer (www.rssmixer.com). This web application allows you to combine various feeds into a new one that can be viewed as RSS, HTML, an iPhone page, as well as a Web and Apple Dashboard Widget. There is more about this project in our blog. […]
July 24th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Hey Ideum folks,
Like the new diggs. I would recommend that if possible you allow users to control the way in which their feeds show up. For example, can you mix 20 different feeds and have the most recent post from any of those feeds always show up on top, and the next recent from what ever site, etc. This would also require a way to designate ‘blog title –> post title’ in the heading. I find when I’m trying to mix feeds in WordPress or Drupal that I more often than not want them to be reproduced in a reverse chronological order similar to the blog logic(regardless of what site they come from). Now other folks may want it according to tags, topics, what have you (all a bit more difficult I imagine). So, in short, allowing users to control and configure such options would go a long way in my opinion towards a larger adoption, though the widget and iPhone hooks are very, very cool!
Great stuff,
Jim
July 24th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
One more time! Just tried another two feeds and realize that they are collating the RSS feeds according to time published, my bad! The first example I used was a poor one. What threw me off a bit on the first go around was that it only displays 10 entries per feed. I now see the light, very cool.
July 25th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Jim,
Thanks for your comments. We really do appreciate it. RSS Mixer is very much a work in progress–in fact, it’s more of a stepping stone to greater things to come (hopefully!). Right now the limit is set to 10 feeds–but that is rather arbitrary–we will likely add more possible feeds once that application is completely stable.
There was a 2 1/2 development period here–so prototype is an accurate description. By the way, love Bavatuesdays and where do I get a Rev shirt!
Jim