David Weinberger, Joho the Blog blogs: Skim, Not Aggregate. “I don’t want an aggregator. I want a skimmer. Functionally, the two are quite alike. But while an aggregator pulls together the stuff I want to read, the point of a skimmer is to let me figure out what not to read. I’m not looking to read automatic summaries because, well, they suck (see the next blog entry). Once I’ve decided to read something, the skimmer lets me read it in full. I just want help in knowing what not to read. (As far as aggregators go, I’m continuing to like Bloglines.com.)…”
Rather than skimming, I want an aggregator that will let me discriminate, in the proper use of that word, separating wheat from chaff. Perhaps based on a Bayesian filter, take all the feeds I like to read (and perhaps all the feeds they link to, and so on, spidering), and filter them for keywords, scoring highest those most like my past preferences. Even my favorite bloggers blog the non-sequitors of their lives, and while I like to read those occasionally, I want their dead-on, killer pieces to float to the top of my reading list.