I have meant to post about AideRSS for months now, but I have been so busy at Suited Media gearing up for the launch of Pokerspace that I have completely disregarded this blog and its readers. Rest assured I will be able to put more time back to this blog in the coming months.

For those that are still listening, there is a something you should check out. Simply put, I am very impressed with some software, a web application, created by a small team of local professionals including a fellow UW graduate, Ilya Grigorik, the Chief Architect of AideRSS, Inc.

AideRSS may be the first tool I have found in a long while that has the potential to significantly improve on my Bloglines experiences. Bloglines has been my tool of choice for blog reading for years, but as past posts have detailed I have found some difficulties navigating and enveloping hundreds of feeds a day, many of which post a lot, some of which post rarely. I used to subscribe to almost 500 feeds, but I am now cut down to about 335.

After meeting Ilya I knew he was creating innovative and potentially important software. I met Ilya at my UW graduation ceremony a few months ago. We exchanged some of our experiences and entrepreneurial interests. Conversing with him before the ceremony confirmed my initial impressions that Ilya was a very interesting individual. We exchanged contacts and I actually added him to my LinkedIn, which is something I have never done with someone I have known for such a short time. Now, a quick glance at his LinkedIn profile shows he is linked to more than 100 very interesting people - I not surprised in the slightest.

I played with his site for a few hours one night after work and found it to be a very well designed web application. I explored the site throughly and found it be an exemplary example of modern web design. I imported my entire OPML feed of into the site and it performed flawlessly. The interface was clear and easy to follow. I especially liked the quality feedback it gives the user at the apprioriate times and places. Looking at the CSS confirmed my guess that it was a cleanly coded site. Without any hesitation I subscribed to the AideRSS blog.

I am also impressed with their technology, PostRank. In fact, I use a lot of the same ranking techniques myself and have
experience with most of the sites (Bloglines, del.icio.us, Technorati, etc.) that enable the AideRSS application. I still use a lot of these services to run what I call “tracking feeds” for myself, my company, and other key words I care about so that I can hear immediately whenever these terms are mentioned online. I used to love PubSub (if you remember of it… if not, research it). I wish it was still around. Wow, apparently it is coming back…

PubSub is undergoing redevelopment at the moment. We’ll be relaunching as PubSub 2.0 this winter with a host of exciting new features and services.

Anyways, I suggest you check out AideRSS.

Matt Galloway hits on many great ideas in his post about influential bloggers.

It is quite simple: (good) bloggers = Influentials

To stay ahead of the curve:

1. Find your blog influentials
2. Listen
3. Repeat step 2

Why I blog this? Now that we have this huge blogosphere to play in we need to start data mining the meta-data it generates. Information overload is my new problem - high quality information at that. I am reading over 500 feeds now. It is become overwhelming - too many blogs to remember/manage in my head. So, how exactly should I be identifying blog influentials? This I do not know. As far as I can tell, identifying blog influentials programmatically is an as-of-yet untapped area with growth potential.

How exactly do we identify blog influentials?

via The Basement, BusinessWeek, RatcliffeBlog

It is good to see that Mitch is still keeping busy playing with interesting ideas. I posted about Mitch’s RatcliffeBlog and MyDensity a couple of times (1, 2) back in March.

I just came across a post entitled “Free Software Has No Pirates“. The content of the post did not surprise me very much, so why am I making this post? Because what did surprise me was where I was reading it - on Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems weblog.

So why on earth would we give our OS away for free?

Because it’ll ensure those without the economic wherewithal to pay for it will still consider using it. Companies that suffered from piracy a decade ago now know the lesson well - piracy is a good thing so long as the pirates are folks who could never afford your products. So stop calling them pirates, call them users. Free software has no pirates. As I’ve said forever, there’s value in volume, even if you’re not paid for it.

Why I blog this? I blog Jonathan’s post because he is bold enough to say what others are too afraid to say. Piracy can be a good thing - in his words, “Free Software Has No Pirates”.

Indy is an extremely simple yet very cool app created by peer-to-peer software pioneer Ian Clarke. Ian is the creator of the Freenet open source peer-to-peer platform, as well as Dijjer, a free peer-to-peer app designed to reduce the bandwidth needs of sharing large files.

Indy uses a collaborative filtering system to learn about your musical preferences in relation to other Indy users.

If you are an artist and want to get heard, consider submitting your music to Indy.

Why I blog this? The software is small, easy, and simple. And, it appears to work fairly well. I have had it running for a few minutes and have already heard some interesting new tracks. It is only at build 5, so I am looking forward to future releases.

via Slashdot via Buzzsonic via p2pnet

Mark Fletcher is the CEO of Bloglines, and that makes him someone worth listening to. He gave a presentation, titled “From the Garage: Lessons Learned Birthing and Building Web Start-Ups”, at the recent ETech conference. Some bloggers have posted highlights from his presentation.

I found this story via ITNorthWest Voice via Andrej Gregov’s Weblog. Read Andrej’s post for the highlights.

Of course, Mark also has his own blog, wingedpig.com, where he has noted some of the coverage of his presentation. He has also put a copy of the presentation online (PPT), due to popular request.

Why I blog this? Andrej’s highlights from Mark’s presenation are solid, and while most of it was not new information to me, one particular item did catch my eye: Outsourcing small projects to eLance.com — where contractors bid for your work.

I had never heard of eLance, and had not given much consideration to using contractors during the startup phase. But during startup, I really want to keep all my dedicated employees working on the real gold of the company. I could see value in outsourcing some of the small projects that are not make-or-break, but still need to be completed.

Dave Pollard of How to Save the World is one of the best bloggers I read. In his words, his blog is about environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.

How to Save the World posts are consistently filled with insightful commentary and analysis, and he goes into far more detail than most blogs. Dave’s content grabs my attention for a sizeable percentage of his posts (i.e. he gets a click out of Bloglines to his actual site), like yesterday’s post entitled Meeting the Acute Need for Entrepreneurial Skills.

The Idea: The New Economy will have an explosive need for critical entrepreneurial skills. Universities are not equipped or inclined to provide them. You can’t learn them just by reading a book. We need to create a whole new ‘channel’ for entrepreneurial education.

Why I blog this? Many of my posts will include links to multiple blogs I am reading, but sometimes I feel the need to highlight specific bloggers who are tuned in more than most. Dave is a blogger who is changing the world with every word he writes.