Amphetadesk

Thanks to Craig Stuntz for pointing out this really interesting new tool, Amphetadesk.

This tool creates a local webserver on your desktop. The scripts allow you to subscribe to any web site that supports an XML version, bringing all of the headlines and summaries of your subscribed sites onto your desktop. Right now it just lists all headlines for each web site, grouped by site. But since the data is local, it shouldn't be long before there is a hack that lets you sort by search word or date or author...

This kind of tool makes keeping track of multiple blogs much easier and, in my opinion, starts to show one possible direction for the future of blogging -- blogs could be a bridge technology to a world in which we rely on individual trusted author/editors rather than corporate news conglomerates to parse through all of the world's news sources to put together a constant perspective on particular topics of interest.

For example, a blogger could decide to be an expert on Iraq and would search the world's news outlets for the most interesting tidbits on that country. I could then subscribe to that individual's blog using Amphetadesk and would then have a view into all of the world's news on that topic, but screened by someone I had chosen to trust to give me just the important or interesting items.

Next question -- what is the economic model?