QuikChannel – Build your own News Channels
QuikChannel was my second product concept. It was conceived in 1997 during the IE 4.0 beta, which came up with the concept of channels using a format called CDF.
The problem I had with the Microsoft channel concept was that publishers control what you see and I wanted to transfer that control to the end user. The idea was to create aggregate channels from all the different news sources. Channels customized around my niche needs.
For example, If I was interested in Microsoft, then all the news items from different CDF sources (Cnet, MSNBC, etc. ) was presented on one page in a Microsoft channel.
The second part of the idea was to use collaborative filtering techniques to decide what news items the user would like to see. So if I am interested in unit testing, I create a Unit Testing channel that aggregates all the Unit Testing Information news items on one page like a Newspaper.
QuikChannel made it to version 1.0 but other priorities took over. CDF never took off and it was years before RSS became popular.
Fast forward to now. Nik from Speerio created a module for DNN that made me reminisce about QuikChannel.
Google News aggregates the News but not at a personal level or drill downs to create Niche topics. I cannot have a personal News page created from the News Sources I choose.
The online aggregators like Feedster, Bloglines are still are oriented around the publisher’s view, expect me to search for content or publish my own content.
Weird. I thought someone would have solved this problem by now. Give me a simple way to view Channels the way I want them, not the way the channel publisher wants them.