No Unread, Cause I Want To Make You Happy
Six months ago, I declared ‘unread’ a bug. I’ll keep this short as to not repeat myself: I still feel that way.
Unread is a worthless signal that encourages poor information management and even worse time management.
Cullect has no notion of unread. No imposing number representing all the things you haven’t done. Wow, brings me down just thinking about it.
Just a constantly flowing river of things of varying importance.
When you’re done with something and don’t want to see it again, hide it. (press ‘h’).
Not done with something? Leave it be.
Are you one of many curators on reading list?
Same story. If you don’t think anyone else will find it interesting, hide it. Please.
Arik Jones uses Cullect within Fluid
Hello Viking Reviews Cullect
Hello Viking wrote up a comprehensive review of Cullect .
And thank you for your support. It’s good to have the vikings on your side.
Recommended Reading Widget Sightings
As you’d expect, I have a number of cullect.com widgets at my main blog – http://garrickvanburen.com.
Elsewhere, Tim Brunelle has added a Recommend Reading widget from Cullect.com/150 to his Useful Lunacy blog.
Free for Most
There are a lot of things free within Cullect:
- Posting to your Twitter, Tumblr, or weblog
- Reading any public reading list
- Widgets and feeds for any public reading list – including search & opml
- Membership to multiple reading lists
Every RSS reader I can think of off-hand is free. Even ones I once paid for have reduced the sticker price of their clients to $0.
While Cullect charges a small monthly subscription, you can get 100% of Cullect’s functionality and never pay a penny.
Unlike other feed readers where a 1 single reading list is tied to you, in Cullect, you can be a member of lots. Just like you’re a member of lots of different social groups. Each with its distinct interests and perspectives.
Cullect charges for 1 thing: Creating more than 1 feed reading list.
Everything else is on us.
You’re welcome.
From the beginning I knew that some portion of Cullect would be free and some not. After exploring a number of models, I liked where Meetup.com placed the fee – on creation.
What’s ‘Important’ in Your RSS Feeds?
Reading a straight RSS feed, let along a double- or triple-digit number of them, without any filtering is a little like checking email without a spam filter. There’s a lot of stuff you just don’t need to pay any attention to. There are a number of services with different approaches to feed filtering (FeedRinse, AideRSS to name just 2).
Cullect takes a different approach. Rather than automatically removing items from a feed 1, Cullect ranks all the items in the reading list (whether from 1 feed or hundreds) based on their ‘importance’. It’s this ranking, the ‘Important’ tab, that is the default view in any Cullect.com reading list.
What’s ‘Important’?
It’s a special combination of a number of attributes from the item and the feed it came from, including;
- How many people in Cullect have recommended it?
- How many incoming links does the item have?
- How many paying members of Cullect are giving money to that feed?
‘How recently was item was published?’ isn’t even in the top 5 2. This helps solve the problem Mike Keliher identified – where the reverse chronological nature of feed reading buries the story originator.
Importance takes time to identify. Plus, how relevant a given item is to you, is most likely independent of when it was published. So, rather than spend 30 minutes scanning your feeds for anything good – try out Cullect.com’s Important rank – the good stuff is at the top.
1. The ‘hide’ command makes it easy to quickly remove unwanted items.
2. That’s what the ‘Latest’ tab is for.
Cullect in 2008 U of M’s Emerging Digerati Week New Media Showcase
As I wrote over at my main blog, Cullect will be part of the 2008 U of Minnesota’s Emerging Digerati Week’s New Media Showcase.
On Friday, April 4th at 10:15am in the Weissman Art Museum I’ll be giving a 15 minute demo of Cullect.
See you there.
For more info: Emerging Digerati Week
Feed Stats Widget Now Shows More Nothing
The cullect.com feed stats widget, in use at; http://garrickvanburen.com , http://mnteractive.com, http://firstcrackpodcast.com, and http://blog.cullect.com, now shows the number of recommended items and monthly donations/patrons even if those numbers are zero. Showing 0 seems like a nice way to promote donations and recommendations both of which are pretty important in Cullect.
Cullect.com Member Profile – Arik Jones
Arik Jones has been using Cullect for his feed reading for a couple months now. Back in January, right after it initially launched, Arik wrote some very nice things about Cullect.
Since then, he’s been reporting bugs, providing ideas for new features, and became Cullect’s first paying customer. With the dollar freshly framed, I sat down with him to talk about his switch to Cullect from Google Reader. Along the way, we hit on some of his favorite features.
Arik, thanks for your support.
Enjoy.
Listen to Arik Jones talk about Cullect.com [8 min]
Mar 10 – Down While I Fix the OpenID Bug
Title says it all for now. Upate: We’re back – OpenID and all.
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- Culld.us URLs Recently Shared at Twitter
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