Dan, The power of feeds is certainly being discussed in the Family History Department. We just haven't figured out the best ways to apply it. Any thoughts?

Some ideas I've had for feeds: - I'd like to be able to go to a form on famlysearch.org in which I can mark a bunch of checkboxes according to my interests, and then be given a feed url that will have items show up tuned to my interests. For example, when new microfilm images from the ScanStone project become available online that are related to the areas of interest I indicated, a feed item with links pointing to those images would show up in my feed. - I can see ways that feeds could be incorporated into the FamilySearch indexing project. For me, time is a scarce commodity, so it would be nice to be able to extract, say, one image a day. Sending me an HTML email with a link to an image, and a form to fill out for the data in that image would be one level of accomplishing this. Another level would be to provide me an RSS/Atom feed, in which a new feed item would show up each day, with an image, and a form to fill out. The feed could be crafted such that if I can't get to that item on a given day, it disappears and is replaced by another the next day. That way I don't get buried in a backlog. - Another idea is to incorprate feeds into the Family Tree system. I suggested a number of ways that could happen in a comment on your first post on eatslikeahuman.blogspot.com. I quote myself: "So, for FamilyTree, it would be fun to have: - an RSS feed for all changes being made by a particular user (given the user's permission to do so, etc) - a feed for all changes to a particular individual or set of individuals - a feed for all changes to an individual or any of his ancestors for N generations - a feed for all changes to an individual or any of his descendants for N generations - a feed for any sources that are added to an individual, a set of individuals, an individual and his descendants, an individual and his ancestors, etc, etc. - A feed for all new digitized images coming online (i.e., one entry in the feed for when images from FHL #123456789 become generally available) - A personalized feed for any disputes that are submitted for info in any of my lines. - And so forth :-)." - My recommendation would be to take a close look at ways in which Yahoo, Google, del.icio.us, and flickr are using feeds. Take note of the flexibility of the feeds, of how feeds can be crafted to very specific interests. It's that kind of thinking that will generate the most useful feeds. - If you haven't already, start using a feed aggregator like bloglines.com (my preference), and see what kinds of feeds are available. The key takeaway point is that feeds don't have to be just for 'news items'. A feed can be useful for keeping up to date on any kind of regularly updated information.