RSS DJ is a new style of RSS aggregator. In fact, we call it an RSS Mixer, and you are the DJ (well, maybe a PJ for Podcast Jockey). Here are some of the coolest things that RSS DJ does and lets you do...

* Take any text based RSS feed (blogs, news feeds, anything), and automatically convert them to spoken word MP3 podcasts!
* Filter out advertisements from RSS Feeds - Yay!
* Scrape web pages for those RSS feeds that don't provide their entire stories but only a summary or a link (you know who you are!)
* Create your own RSS DJ "Mixes" combining feeds based on tags, freshness, and peer ratings

Tom Foremski's recent piece entitled "The selling of the Blogosphere" in SiliconValleyWatcher.com brings up very fascinating and interesting points about Technorati's push to monetize it's archives of blogs. We all know that markets are conversations, but does Technorati's efforts mean that now conversations are markets? I'm not sure of the entire implication of this statement, but it seems to me that the idea of a 'market' is so far gone from what we knew it to be even 10 years ago that we can now make a direct one-to-one correlation between healthy, vibrant conversations through blogging, and the markets of which they speak. Even the conversations that don't discuss direct commercial references and topics are becoming their own markets in the sense that there is value to what is being discussed and how it is done.

Tell me if this makes sense. I think that Apple's move to Intel is a good thing for Linux, despite the recent pessimism and doubts about any possible benefits to our community. Why do I feel this way? I think that the primary obstacle to home users (not corporate users - they're a different beast), is change. Not necessarily what would be possibly changed to, but the change itself - the act of changing. This is what's most scary to Windows users comfortable and set in their ways. There's a certain assumption that it's Windows or nothing for home desktop PC's. If Apple plays its cards right, and can get a good 10% of desktop share of home users, think of the mental effect on the general Windows populus. Suddenly, the possibility of something other than Windows actually working in the home becomes clear. Think of the "Firefox effect" - how many people are now using Firefox? Some accounts are at 25%, some 40%. Realistically, it's probably at 15% world-wide. That's amazing since the November official release of Firefox 1.0! How many people even knew there was an alternative browser besides IE? Now, some people I know won't give up Firefox for anything! Amazing.

I've been trying to get the word out (specifically to Adam Curry) about a project I've created on SourceForge (link here), called RS3, that takes a set of RSS feeds, crawls and scrapes the _original_ article linked to in each feed item, summarizes that page, and then optionally converts that text summary to speech and a playlist. A set of ogg files is created from this which is wrapped up in an M3U playlist which can be copied to your favorite media player. So, in essence, you can have your RSS feeds actually read aloud to you through a podcast on any media player or PC.

Last night I was watching an episode of "Orange County Choppers" (http://www.orangecountychoppers.com) - I don't know if you've heard of this show or seen it but it's the reality show on the Discovery channel where the daily on-goings of the OCC Custom Motorcycle shop is followed. The owner, Paul Sr., has a short fuse and his sons Paul Jr. and Michael ("Mikey") work at the shop under him. A lot of tension exists between the guys during approaching deadlines and it's great entertainment. Being that I live less than an hour from the shop, I try to watch it regularly.

Anyway, last night, they were starting to build the "I,Robot" promotional bike and Paul Jr.'s job was to fabricate and install the exhaust pipes in an artistic and yet functional way - as is the case with every custom bike they build - especially for high-profile events like movie releases. During this episode, a day and a half of real time went by and Paul Jr. had an initial idea and design for the exhaust and he had it put on and shaped, and the pipes bent and welded all to come to the final conclusion - after a day and a half - that what he saw he didn't like. Paul Sr - the owner - was pissed at Paul Jr. and began screaming 'just get it done' with the deadline for completion of the bike looming only a few days away. Bantering went back and forth for a while and it was fun to watch the arguing from the safe distance of my living room.

Just One - Me. (or You).