Darshan Singh, managing editor of PerfectXML.com, announced on XML-DEV the release of RSSConnect, an open source .NET news aggregator.

"PerfectXML.com team is pleased to announce RSSConnect: A C# .NET application that primarily allows reading RSS feeds. Other features include: XSLT skins, ability to export to any OLEDB/SQL Server/MSDE database and search this database, check for new feeds, OPML support, Integrated Internet Explorer Favorites view, Web search functionality, and more." – Darshan Singh

RSSConnect has two neat features:

• XSLT Skins – HTML is rendered from RSS using a user-selected XSLT file inside a Skins directory.
• Export ot Database – articles can be saved to a database.

While RSSConnect is less polished than projects like RSS Bandit, I think some of the ideas in RSSConnect are stepping stones to some really neat stuff.

For example, one of the common complaints by client-side aggregator users is that they like the unique looks of each blog.  Extending the XSLT skin idea one more step, each RSS feed can specify the XSLT files the news aggregator should use to render the feed content into HTML or other output types like PDF.