It’s been a while since I hacked at Feed on Feeds, but I’ve finally got my rating stuff doing something useful. In Yet More Aggregator Madness I mentioned a feature I wanted:
Ratings, similar to iTunes, so if I was in a hurry I could just choose to read the feeds/items designated as 5 *’s
This is now in place, and when I’m using my aggregator I can easily present the list of feeds and filter it via the ratings, so if I have minimal time, or want to start with my favorites, I just view the “5 star” feeds. as I move down to the 4 star, 3 star, 2 stars, etc, the number of feeds increase, since it’s really doing a “show me all feeds that have at least x number of stars. It seems like Bloglines could make great use of this sort of data among it’s users. I mean, just because I subscribe to something does not mean I love it, it might mean I just want to keep an eye on it. It’s another ‘voting’ system I guess. There is the extra step of having to rate a feed, and I think I have to make that easier. Right now new feeds come in with no stars by default, perhaps they should start as 5 stars (increasing the likelyhood I’ll see them) and I can then drop them down as needed… Just a thought.
Anyway, this is the reason I like using an aggregator I control over a service or commercial product, it’s extremely easy to add in a feature like this quicky, and if it doesn’t fly, it’s just as easy to get rid of it.