Dave Winer is plugging the “River of News” idea. Having been a Radio user and having set up Drupal’s feeds, I’ve seen that one, and I’ll pass. I remember back in my Radio days seeing an item I wanted to read a little later, when I had time, roll away down the page and I’d have to hunt for a long time just to find it again, and sometimes I never could find it again.

There’s a lot of information, and channeling it all into a single river doesn’t help me in the least. There’s too much there to swallow. (I’m flashing on Kathy Mar right now.) The river is only useful if there’s a net that comes with it.

That’s what I’m looking for. An agent, for lack of a better word, that will do a quick-n-dirty semantic analysis of the RSS feed(s) and prioritize the items based on the results. I don’t mean necessarily any sort of bayesian filtering; I don’t care what technique it uses, so long as it works passably well. Add to it the ability to create a “To read” pile for the times Jon Gruber or Guy Kawasaki or Jeff Zeldman create something in long form that I know I’m going to want to read when I have the time to savor it, and you’ve got my attention. Give me a “scrapbook” where I can “paste” in some of the really great things I stumble across and I’m there. (I mean something more than simply a list of bookmarks, here. When I hit the button/key to add it to the scrapbook, the scrapbook has to be smart enough to organize itself. At the minimum it needs to be sortable by date and/or site/author. If I’m allowed to dream, I’d also like to provide it with a taxonomy list and have it automagically file the scraps in all applicable pigeonholes from that as well.)

But the catch is, it also needs to be a browser (meaning it must be capable of reading documents off the web). After working with Radio, and with WordPress, I’ve realized that I’m just not going to lauch another app, or pop to another URL, to add something to my read pile or my scrapbook. I’ll click a button or hit a hotkey combination, but’s all I’ll do. Anything else is too much work. What can I say, I’m naturally lazy, though I prefer lethargic. (My blogroll needs updated badly, but that’s just another symptom.)

Until something like that comes along, I’ll stick with Safari’s RSS. It’s far from perfect, but at least that way I can take my river in glasses or jugs (let’s see, I’m in the mood for some Doc right now) rather than just opening my mouth while the flood roars past and hoping I snag something tasty.

(OK, I’ve officially had it with the river analogy. It’s not right. “River” implies each mouthful tastes like the others, and that’s not true.)