Messing with RSSBus

A couple of days ago, I was sent a link to RSSBus and got a downloaded copy. I'm just starting to mess with it, but my geeky sense is tingling. This is going to be REALLY cool.

The general idea is exactly the kind of black box I've been talking about for a few months, where web services, RSS content, etc. are fed in and mashed up feeds and other outputs come out the other end.

The name hints at the concept in hardware of the buses that are used to channel data through a central place. Your motherboard's bus moves data from one component to another and this does the same with web data.

Built-in components for things like Amazon searches, FTP upload/download, and even hooks into the Asterisk telecom software offer a tantalizing array of possibilities and the ability to add on to it mean that it's likely to get pretty freaking cool by the time it's out of beta.

This is the mashup toolbox that previous attempts have *wanted* to be. Rather than going for lowest common denominator simplicity (which results in the same 10 mashups over and over again), they went for real power. That usually results in better solutions, but takes longer. And, I'm all in favor of a slow roasted solution that can't be beat over yet another fast food rehash.

I look forward to seeing where this goes.