FeedFerret

About

FeedFerret is a proposal for web-based feed-aggregation software with some additional features not generally found in feed aggregators:

• the ability for users to comment on feed items
• the ability for users to categorize/tag feed items
• the ability to see what comments others have left on items, and respond to those comments in a threaded way
• the ability to export the commentary in a format which the original sources could incorporate in their on-site comments (like trackbacks)

All communication would be done using open formats (pre-existing where possible).

With the addition of a blogging feature, FeedFerret would then be one core component of a distributed social network.

Prototype

Since MediaWiki is what I know, I'm going to develop my prototype as a MediaWiki extension -- but the concept should be platform-independent; the data-exchange format is the key piece.

Since that is the key piece, it should use existing open formats as much as possible (starting with RSS/Atom), and where necessary extend an existing format rather than creating a completely new one.

Software components to be adapted:

• Extension:RSS: RSS/Atom reader for MediaWiki -- mainly useful as sample RSS/Atom reader code. If it already stores the feed data, then that's a good start, but I think I want it to create a permanent wiki page for each feed item (for a number of reasons), and I doubt it does that.
  • This would be the first of several "feed interface drivers", eventually including drivers for Facebook, Google+, etc. so they can be at least read-only (and maybe writable somehow). Is there an API for G+ yet?

Software components I'm currently hunting down:

• a MediaWiki hook that will let me periodically poll each RSS feed in turn (I know there is something like this which is triggered, I think, every time a page is viewed, because MW uses it to run jobs in the "job queue").
• Semantic MediaWiki API. I will probably need to be able to output custom formats for the /talkback and other feeds.

Other stuff to be done:

• LiquidThreads needs to be callable from non-talk pages. They may be working on this, and they may get to it before I do. Probably their implementation will not be as flexible as what I need. Not sure what I need yet, but it needs to be flexible.