The next major feature for frassle will be an aggregator I won't mind using myself. Currently the "aggregator" functionality means that I can have feeds come in from RSS rather than be written on frassle itself. This enables the basic inter-category relationship statistics, and the essential technical stuff, but the interface blows. Aggregators should, well, aggregate.

The updated design will show recent postings from any feeds below the current category. So, for example, activating the aggregator inside my incoming category will show you the latest posts in all my feeds. I will probably break down incoming into subcategories for people I know personally, tech news, normal news, etc., and so you'll be able to narrow down your aggregated feeds that way too.

SharpReader, an RSS aggregator for Windows written in C#, has been influential here. SharpReader does a similar thing with categories, although it is a three-paned reader. Another cool feature it has is automatic threading together of related posts; when posts link to each other or both link to the same external URLs, they are visibly tied together. This is enormously convenient and I intend to copy and extend this idea for frassle. Extend because the careful threading together of related ideas is not something that should be left solely to computer programs. It's an intelligent activity.