Max Gladwell

A new RSS feed resource organizes and delivers blog content without the complexities of Really Simple Syndication.

We’ve sung the praises of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) before, specifically on RSS Awareness Day. It’s a fundamental tool in listening to the social web, and there are countless ways to manage RSS feeds. Subscribing to key RSS Feeds is essential for blogging and brand monitoring. It’s the most efficient way to scan for relevant headlines and find access points for joining the conversation. Our preferred tool is Google Reader, though this requires some familiarity with RSS, and you have to physically add the feeds to your Reader. Our new favorite tool is Regator.

This new RSS tool makes it much easier to search, scan, snack, and locate the headlines that matter to you. It’s like AllTop meets Google Reader and then some. Yes, Max Gladwell is one of the blogs in the Society & Culture > Environment & Nature > Green Living channel. Others include Treehugger, Earth2Tech, and EcoGeek. You can also nominate a blog.

This is a phenomenal tool because it serves the needs of its two constituencies, bloggers and readers, so well. The features and user interface are easy and intuitive. It is the most effective way we’ve seen to manage blog reading and interaction. Each blog gets its own page, which is nice, and one has to click thru to the blog to actually read the post, though users can comment within Regator. Ideally, there should be a way to import these back to the actual blog, as one can do with FriendFeed. For advanced users, you can subscribe to Regator RSS feeds for your favorite blogs, favorite channels, keywords, and saved posts.

According to Mashable!:

Straddling the search engine and feed reader demographics, Regator attacks the simple concept of helping you find great Web content with one fatal swoop, presenting a tool that’s very attractive to both the average Web surfer and the early adopter crowd. Regator’s highly customizable capabilities for content you find through the site or add yourself means that it presents itself as a customizable feed reader for any type of user with a wide array of interests.

As a starting point for someone that may be entirely new to the blogosphere or simply doesn’t know where to start for a new topic of interest, Regator’s search and recommendation engine works quite well. The user interface is also very easy to use and makes customization of content while surfing simple as well.

The easy interface allows you to favorite entire blogs and save individual posts, much like starring them in Google Reader. You can also vote posts up in a Digg fashion, which pushes them to the top of their respective channel in the Top Rated tab. If you like a post, you can share it via Twitter, Facebook, or email with one click. We tried to integrate this function to Google Reader with no luck, because it’s nice to send a Tweet when you see a great headline and possibly spark a conversation.

The following video overview is worth a watch to get familiar with the many ways you can listen to the social web, find and manage great content, share it, and engage in the conversation.

We’ll go so far as to say that Regator is a positive step toward filtering the web down to the precise information we want and need…nothing more and nothing less. It’s not the killer app, but it’s definitely a step toward it. Now we’re just waiting for the iPhone app.

We encourage you to try it out…and to favorite Max Gladwell, of course.

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