I've seen my share of bad web products. Some are bad because they are poorly implemented, others are bad because they are ill-conceived. The new Private Label Custom Domains product from FeedBlitz definitely falls into the latter category.

To be honest, I'm not even sure where to start here. From what I can gather, FeedBlitz wants me to pay them for the privilege of syndicating my content onto their domain. They're basically trying to sell subdomains on the feedblitz.com site at prices that are higher ($9.99 per year) than what you can pay to register your own real domain.

This is clearly a product without a market; I mean, who is this mythical customer that is out there wishing they could syndicate the content from their already-existing site onto a subdomain that they pay for at some other site? Nobody, that's who.

And I think FeedBlitz knows this. Follow me through the break for a few more thoughts on this.

In the early days of the web, before high-fallutin' content-management systems, document control, and database-driven blogs, web authors were for the most part forced to stage their content in a clumsy, time-consuming way. Manually uploading and resizing graphics and hand-writing HTML in an early web editor like "HotDog" or "HotMetal" (remember those?) was how we all did our first web authoring, and thank goodness the times have changed.

With the evolution of multi-user content management software (like Blogsmith, for example) and simple syndication protocols like RSS and Atom, it has become much easier to run high-volume web sites that require constant content additions and alterations. Sadly, the productivity evolution also made it easier for plagiarists to steal content and rebrand it as their own--mostly, we suppose, because of RSS, which give friend and foe alike equal, unfettered access to most blogs and news web sites. Since RSS is an open system with no access controls, it's as easy to rip somebody off using their news feed as it is to use it in the manner intended--usually, syndication with proper attribution of author and publisher.

Seeing this as a problem with a business answer, a former Yahoo exec started a company called Attributor, whose service can track and monitor the use of syndicated content across the web. This is an interesting idea, and aside from setting these Redwoodians up as obvious Google Bait, syndication monitoring appears to be good business, too. Attributor just signed up Reuters as a new account. Not a bad fish to have on the hook, especially when you're just getting started. Attributor also offers a service which will enforce content licensing--allowing publishers to monetize their syndication in a way RSS alone cannot.

Announced Tuesday at DEMO, SplashCast is a Portland, Oregon start-up bringing a new publishing platform to the masses. Users create "channels" - a collection of audio clips, photos, video clips, text, or an RSS feed of content, which you can share or embed into your blog. The content is presented in slide show format and you have the option to include background music. As far as content goes, either upload your own, or you can pull photos and video directly off Flickr and YouTube, respectively.

I think that this is a really ambitious but really cool idea - it provides a place where user-generated content can be user-rebroadcast and reach a broader audience. Instead of people nibbling away at single videos on YouTube, or single photos on Flickr, they can bring it all together into one easy to digest kibble of media. It's like a simple to use mash up interface.

The one thing that concerns me is that it doesn't seem to have any controls in relation to copyrights. There's a cute warning when you go to upload media which says, "We don't allow copyright infringement, porn, or hateful stuff." but that seems pretty weak. I can only assume that they are monitoring uploaded content, which seems like a daunting task when faced with policing user-generated content. It would be cool if it endorsed Creative Commons licensing, or was able to detect CC content. Also, the entire interface is Flash based, which can be a turn off for some folks. It's also not as flexible as I would have expected (I can't specify a Podcast RSS feed, for example). All my gripes aside, it looks like a cool concept and will be interesting to see where it heads.

[Via PodTech.net]

While we're on the subject of mobile RSS readers... Bloglines announced yesterday that its Bloglines Mobile service now features integrated Skweezer technology.

What's Skweezer, you ask? Well, on its own, it's a free, platform-independent web service that optimizes page content for mobile devices. The benefit of Skweezer technology being added to Bloglines is that you won't have to specifically go to the Skweezer portal when you want to force a particular site to be friendly to your mobile device. When you visit a page via Bloglines Mobile, Skweezer compresses and reformats the content on the fly. Bonus: Skweezer can also translate content into more than a dozen languages.

Earlier today, NewsGator announced a new addition to its suite of RSS aggregator software. NewsGator Go! is designed for portable devices running Windows Mobile. The software features full synchronization with NewsGator Online and all of the NewsGator desktop clients, and caches its data locally so you don't have to be connected to the internet when you browse your feeds. You can also use the "My Clippings" feature to archive content for access - via any NewsGator app, of course - at a later time.

NewsGator Go! costs $29.95 and is available for purchase via the NewsGator web site.

(Thanks, Tom!)

RSS and Atom feeds have become ubiquitous to the point that we've begun to take them for granted, but there are still some sites stuck in the stone age. For those sites there's Atomibulator, a service that watches feed-less web sites and provides an Atom feed that's updated whenever they are. It's a bit crufty at this point--adding a feed to the service requires editing a Wikipedia page--but potentially very useful still.