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SHIFD - synchronize your feeds with your mobile phone

27.Jun.2007

Hackday London seemed like a great event from all the feedback I already read. I’ll have to wait until we have on own Portuguese Hackday. Still the event results are already emerging. SHIFD was the winner of the best overall hack award and it’s easy to see the reason. The developers from the New York Times’ lab Michael Young and Nick Bilton created a way to easily take a bunch of feeds, notes and contacts into your mobile phone.

The hack is first composed by a RFID chip inserted on a mobile phone and a USB RIFD detector. Then whenever the detector finds your mobile phone it launches the SHIFD website, where you can choose which feeds you want to read, insert notes and search for places to add. You can also select how much time will you have to read the feeds, which will determine how much content will be delivered. After that, just take your mobile phone and take your trip to wherever you wanted to go. SHIFD will send you a message as soon as you and your phone leave with a link for a mobile friendly web page with all your feeds, notes and places for you to read on your way. You can also save posts to read later in your mobile so, when you arrive home they will all be displayed on your computer.

On their website you can find more pictures of the hack and a video with all the explanation. There isn’t still a live version but the creators are working on it. They are also working on a version that doesn’t use RFID. I’d suggest to also try a Bluetooth version, since it’s more common on mobile phones.

Internet on a mobile phone without WiFi is still a bit expensive, but if you can have all your feeds summed up on a lightweight web page you will save a lot more than checking out each RSS feed or website.

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6 Comments

I'm a bit biased, but here it goes... I loved this hack, more for the making notes ability than for reading feeds.. simply because I already have a page that does that for me. I don't like to plan my feed-reading like podcasts. Do you? ;) Sometimes I'm on the tube and remember "oh, Jeremy Keith had a long interesting post" so I go ahead and read it... without the need to plan ahead. I'm working on a couple of features that improves the UXP on mobifeeds, so it should get better soon. Despite this, the note-taking ability of this hack is pretty slick. When the bluetooth version comes out, I'll definitely use it. I already do this, only manually.. take notes on my desktop and then send a msg via bluetooth to my cell. With this hack it would be more automatic.. but as for the feeds, I'm fine thanks. :) That is, unless they find a way to store the unread feed items directly onto the phone and don't require a GPRS/WAP connection to read them... then, I'd be sold! :D

andré luís / 27.Jun.2007 at 04:32pm

I currently have all those features in my Windows Mobile + Oulook 2007, but I find it useful for other phones. I believe there are desktop apps that do the same with local database (like outlook, thunderbird, live contacts and more) that share that information with S60, WM and PalmOS devices or through a Java mobile app. The hack is using a SMS gateway that has some costs, and the RFID is only to detect if the phone is there. Bluetooth would had worked a lot better, or even IR or something that could spare the SMS cost.

alcides / 27.Jun.2007 at 05:27pm

In my opinion, I don't consider it planning your feed-reading. With the increasing number of feeds I subscribe, it's good to have the possibility to keep up with all the new posts even when I'm outdoors and mark the interesting ones.

A bluetooth version was only my suggestion. Probably they won't make it.

Of course the solution is only to regular mobile phones, like the one I own. The notification by SMS and RIFD detection is specially to turn the all process as simple as possible.

sérgio santos / 28.Jun.2007 at 02:27pm

I believe they've said something indicating they will be deploying a bluetooth version... so let's be patient. As for feed reading, like I said, I already do all that without having the extra work before leaving the house. Just click my name at the bottom to learn how (more features coming soon).

andré / 29.Jun.2007 at 03:36am

I'd already been to mobifeeds website but, although I didn't tried it, it seemed that it didn't mark the already read posts neither had the possibility to gather several feeds ate the same page. But I agree that SHIFD should have something that, for example, fetched all the unread posts from a bunch of feeds, without us having to choose them. Cause I also don't see my self having to do all the setup right before I leave. It should be something more automatic.

sérgio santos / 29.Jun.2007 at 12:17pm

Thank you for that (accidental?) piece of feedback. If you go to the development blog, I've put up a list of todo's on the side. And some of them are already done, only not online yet. ;) I can assure you that those features have been on my roadmap since day one, but I have a day job and am finishing up college. So I haven't had much time to do what I want with it. But if you have more ideas like those, don't be shy... send me feedback. I take every piece of feedback very seriously. Be it positive or negative. :) Thank you.

andré / 29.Jun.2007 at 05:49pm