InterSynd: a web syndication intermediary that makes recommendations

This paper describes the design and development of a Web syndication intermediary that works with various syndication technologies, specifically the RSS family and Atom. We developed format-neutral middleware that sits between content sources and the user. Another objective was to add a recommendation component transparently to the intermediary. Implicit collaborative recommendations of new feeds are made. The system, called InterSynd, isn't tied to any particular feed reader; we developed a simple Web client for proof of concept. The extensible syndication software was built using the open standards ROME library and JDOM.