Monday, March 20, 2006
Using Megite to Clear the Information Clutter
by
This weekend, I ran across an interesting site called Megite that offers some hope to the information overload that everybody keeps talking about. One of the biggest problems I currently have with the RSS feeds I subscribe to is that many of them write about the same story, so I have countless duplicates. For people who don’t subscribe to many feeds, this probably isn’t as much of a problem as it is for people who have 100+ feeds and end up with 85 stories about the rumored video iPod every morning. Megite tries to solve the problem by sorting through everything and offering up a list of articles that is a little easier to digest without all the duplication.
The way Megite works is they give it a list of keywords or URLs and then it does what they call auto-discovery and finds content based on the info supplied. The magic happens when they parse all that through the algorithm they’ve come up with, to pick and rank the stories. The nice thing is once they set up a category (currently they have nine) the system runs on its own continually adding more sites and finding and ranking the content. For those familiar with news sites like Newsvine or Digg you can think of Megite as a version that does all the work for you.
I’ve left the best part for last. My Megite takes anOPML file you provide and creates your own personal Megite page. An OPML file is nothing more than an exported list of your RSS subscriptions that Megite then plugs into its magic formula. I’ve tried it and really liked what I saw. but quickly realized a way to edit my list would be a nice feature to have and one that Megite told me is on the way. By including feeds from a good share of other news sites, my personal feed is slanted too much toward types of news that I don’t normally pay that much attention to. Providing Megite with a slimmed down and personalized list of sources to start with would give much better results than the all-encompassing list I initially provided them. Check out My Megite to see what my personalized Megite looks like currently.
The personalized Megite is currently open to a limited number of testers but my request was immediately answered. So if you’re on RSS overload, I’d suggest sending them your OPML file and taking it for a test drive. While it might still be a little rough around the edges, I think they’re headed in the right direction. It will be exciting to watch the service grow.
