Eric's Rants

I have finally found a way to easily create a news roll widget for my home page. This is done using two different "Web 2.0" services. The first step is to make a custom RSS feed using Frankenfeed from Big In Japan. This provides a free service that allows me to aggregate content from multiple RSS providers. I used RSS feeds from Slashdot, Mac Rumors, CNet, etc. and combined them into a single custom RSS feed. This is really easy and takes 2-3 minutes. Next, I used another service called Freedo Style which presents the UI for the previously created feed. Visit the Fredoo Style web site and create and customize your news widget to your liking. This provides a code snippet that is loaded in into my Blogger template though could be placed on any web page. This took 2-3 minutes. Once done I will now have a neat little widget that allows me to display recent headlines from a number of my favorite web sites. I can sign into my Frankenfeed site and add or delete RSS feeds from my custom feed, Freedo Style then detects the changes and they are reflected on my Blogger site. Easy and free!