Oh, and one more thing: I assume you've seen the new iTunes. I want to steal the new features for my news aggregator. I'd been thinking of these things long before the new version came out, but of course these are not unique ideas. And how well they seem to work in iTunes now (for me at least) seems to be a good thing to point at and say "that's what I mean".

So... I want a count of how many times I "play" a channel (ie. visit a link or story from the RSS feed.) I want to rate my channels. I want to make "playlists" (ie. categories), and "smart playlists" (ie. active, persistent searches). I'd also like to synch my subscriptions and things with my website and.. hmm, well, no one's made an iPod analogue for news aggregation/reading yet. ...or have they?

So far, I've been sticking with AmphetaDesk and still using my crappy old bloated hog of an Ampheta outline template. (And I see that someone else has just mentioned it today. I really need to revisit it and make a bunch of sorely-needed improvements, space savings, and updates.)

I started playing with NetNewsWire a bit, and I think it's pretty keen. But, I don't have the source to tinker with, so I'm less interested. (No slight on the app, or the developer. You might love it. I'm just more D.I.Y.) So I was starting to think of coding up my own work-a-like in Java, but then I start thinking further: I don't think I can really learn to love a native-GUI web news aggregator, period. I think it's got to be web-based in some way. It's about context switching, in a way I think. If RSS channels had all of the content from the sites they describe, then maybe I could just twiddle around in the UI of the app... but I always end up in the browser. So... Why ever leave it?

So, back to Ampheta I go, I think. I just need to start hanging out on IRC more again. I keep doing vanishing acts.