Via Jeff Jarvis, then Rafat Ali, UK's The Guardian is offering a branded desktop RSS aggregator, called Newspoint. The tech company behind the app, Consenda is funded by Advance.Net and the LA Times. I've worked on a hyperlocal citizen's media project supported by the former, and the latter is a Tribune newspaper.
Very, very interesting. I wouldn't have thought for media companies to strike out into desktop app territory. While this scheme can support a better user experience, this is just out of their core competency. Maybe the gizmo is a thin desktop interface, with a mostly Web application infrastructure underneath. That's essentially what the Gush guys do, with Flash and Python. Besides, all of those guys have big Web and Web application knowledge in house, so why not do a Web based aggregator or outsource to Bloglines or Yahoo! for that matter?
Enough of the tech noodling though. This signals that some more of the big media companies are starting to "get" web syndication and feel it's territory worth experimenting in. They'd better before Yahoo! et. al. completely dominate the space. Also, I say some more because at the next to last Online News Association, here in Evanston, I alerted some media types that this stuff might be a big deal, and actually heard about a few interesting projects.
Final bon mot. If a local news company can make the aggregator branding hyper-locally oriented, both geographically, North Shore of Chicago say, and socially, e.g. high school sports fans, minivan moms, 20something partiers, they might have a winner. Throw it on a disk. Throw it on newcomers' doorsteps. Instant gateway to the community. The targeted news comes to you, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood newspaper monopoly. And advertisers would probably go bananas.