Jon Udell discovered the chunking and scanning issue that affects news aggregator UI.  This is why I didn't finished my own Outlook-based news aggregator.  News is different from e-mail in that people read them differently.  People are used to picking up a newspaper and scanning the headlines in a specific order, front to back or a quick frontpage scan followed by favorite section and then the remainder.  While scanning, they move quickly across vertically or horizontally, briefly stopping to read first paragraphs of articles with interesting headlines.  Similar thing happens with blog websites, a quick scan down the page looking at the headlines and first few lines of each post.  The way an article looks also matters since a blogger will typically have several types of posts.  Some go for in-depth comments, others concentrate more on links.

News aggregator style I am playing with now is a browser-based UI with three columns.  The leftmost column lists subscribed feeds.  Middle column lists headlines from feeds or categories (feed groups) selected in the leftmost column.  Short preview paragraphs are also shown below each headline.  Rightmost column is used to display articles or links related to headlines.

Chunking and scanning RSS feeds. I've been somewhat surprised to find myself preferring the Radio UserLand aggregator to the others I also use: NetNewsWire and NewsGator. Last night I realized why: it's a matter of chunking and scanning. In RU, I scan and dismiss batches of 100 items. On a typical day, when I receive a few hundred items, that's just a couple of clicks — modulo any additional effort to save or respond to an item. In NetNewsWire and NewsGator, it's more of an item-by-item thing. There are consolidated views available, but they display headlines (or truncated previews) only. Processing a lot of feeds feels like more work. … [Jon's Radio]