I love stuff like this…
This is a quick note to invite curious people to check out Somniphobia, a web experiment I’ve been working on.
It implements some of the ideas I talked about earlier about combining blog and forum style viewing of messages. I’m interested to see how well that does (or doesn’t) work with an actual user load.
As an extra perk, it also provides a server-based RSS aggregation service. You can subscribe to RSS feeds and view them from any browser, without seeing repeats of things you’ve already read. Added bonus for Hiptop owners: it will serve up a stripped down version that loads very quickly. Feeds get updated hourly. I use this every day to read blogs on the bus. You can even import your OPML subscriptions list from NetNewsWire, or whichever desktop aggregator you use.
Finally, there is a “blog cosmos” experiment in progress. Everyone can see which feeds everyone else is signed up for. You can preview other people’s feeds and subscribe to them too if they look interesting. I hope this will prove to be an interesting way of discovering new feeds. It also provides an opportunity to collect feed statistics, including a feed popularity chart.
This is the first public test of the site, so make sure you’re feeling adventurous. Things are subject to change, breakage, or divine act. I have lots of other crazy ideas for this micro-community, if it becomes popular enough.
[~stevenf]