Answer: Showing old content as new

Ugh! Ack! Stop it. Life is too short to see old blog posts, god forbid blog posts I’ve already read.

Priorities

In every application you have to figure out what your SLAs are, and this shapes every choice you make.

If you’re writing an aggregator (or maintaining an existing one) your first priority should be suppressing false positives for newness, everything else pales in comparison.

Despite the obvious geek-macho appeal optimizing timeliness is way way down the list.

LazyWeb: Suppressed Blog Posts

Wanted: a plugin for Wordpress that holds back from the feeds all new content for 6 to 12 hours (depending on length, and categories) so you don’t have to see me correcting all my spelling mistakes in painful real time. (might also be useful in cutting down on real dumb blog posts)

Bloglines

Bloglines get your act together, you’ve been terrible for weeks, and I don’t have time for this. This morning I got a blog post from Caterina announcing Yahoo’s acquisition of del.icio.us. I’ve been a user, fan and evangelist for 4 years, I hate every other online aggregator I’ve tried, but I’m leaving if this continues.