A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Chris Pirillo letting me know about a new metasearch service he devised called Gada.be. I wasn't able to try it out because I was recuperating from surgery at the time, but today I took it for a test spin and I was immediately won over by its OPML support.
Why? Well, instead of subscribing to a dozen individual search feeds, I can import a single OPML file which links to them all. For example, the OPML below links to 16 different search feeds for the keyword FeedDemon:
I'm not a big user of mobile devices (call me a Luddite, but when I'm away from I desk I want to forget all about technology), but if I was I'd also love how Gada.be simplifies keyboard entry of queries from cell phones and other handheld gadgets.
For details, check out Chris's blog for his announcement of Gada.be's public beta.
The server is getting slammed. I can't connect at all. Sounds like good stuff, though and it addresses a particular feature request that didn't make the cut. ;)
I'm feeling a new FD Search definition coming on.
Posted by: Jack Brewster | Monday, October 10, 2005 at 10:56 PM
Manually "trackbacking"
http://blog.crankygeek.com/archives/2005/10/10/gada-be-feeddemon-search/
Posted by: Jack Brewster | Monday, October 10, 2005 at 11:56 PM
Well, disregard the Search def for now. Since results aren't returned as RSS, FeedDemon can't do anything with it.
Posted by: Jack Brewster | Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 08:11 AM
What if FeedDemon created a "gada.be" search folder, and combined various OPML files output from gada.be into one "term" in the sidebar?
Posted by: Chris Pirillo | Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 10:12 PM
I'm guessing here, (Nick would have to confirm) but we're so close to the release of 1.6 that it wouldn't make the cut.
I do like the idea though. I've got a few extensions to this that I'll share with Nick if we get some time to talk about it.
Do I take this to mean that there's no plans to implement RSS output from gada.be at this time?
Posted by: Jack Brewster | Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 11:56 PM
There are plans... :) That'll likely be a joint venture with a FeedBurner of sorts.
Posted by: Chris Pirillo | Thursday, October 13, 2005 at 01:57 AM
Eeeeeexcellent ;)
Posted by: Jack Brewster | Thursday, October 13, 2005 at 10:07 AM
Anything you could do for gada.be in this impending (or future) release would certainly be appreciated.
You're currently one of the top crawlers, FWIW... http://gada.be/stats
Posted by: Chris Pirillo | Friday, October 14, 2005 at 02:42 AM
Chris, I'll follow up with you by email shortly.
Posted by: Nick Bradbury | Friday, October 14, 2005 at 10:23 AM