The Service I've Been Waiting For

Several days ago, I started using Original Signal after reading Brian Benzinger's excellent comparison of single page aggregators. I love the service, not only because I find it increadibly useful but also because I have fun memories from working with someone on a similar idea in 1998.

Back then, I found it too timeconsuming to click through to all my favorite web sources several times a day in order to stay up-to-date. I wished a service that would let me quickly scan the headlines from my favorite websites before I actually visited them. My business partner and I also considered adding personalized domain name registration to enable people to host such a page in a familiar location. Through various connections, we had access to a top level domain space, which was already generating a solid revenue stream. A stumbling block at the time was how to implement aggregation: XML was not widely enough adopted to be suitable for such a service. Fortunately, it only took a couple of extra years to become pervasive. We didn't get the project off the ground. But the desire to have a personalized preview page of the relevant web news at my fingertips stayed with me. I think Original Signal comes as close as I've seen.