#2 dinosaur monitoring

[cjodea]

Ripped straight out of 43folders

2. Smarter Dinosaurs

NetNewsWire has an unobtrusive but super-helpful little section called “Dinosaurs” (”Windows > Dinosaurs“) which lets you display any feeds that haven’t seen any activity over a period of time that you choose. It’s a really neat way to weed out the old cruft, but it is sort of tucked away and not particularly fancy. I’d be surprised if most NNW users even knew it was there (let alone what it was for).

I’d love to see the Dinosaurs get the following education (and consequent managerial promotions):

* Every week or so, Dinosaurs pops up to do a little check-in with me
* It alerts me to any feeds that haven’t “done anything” over my chosen period (I’d choose “one month”)
* It shows me any feeds that appear to be broken or abandoned (404, etc.)
* It shows me all the feeds that have “expired” (per my instructions) since the last “check-in” and gives me the chance to resuscitate them with the same or a new expiration window
* It warns me of the feeds that are going to expire over the next period and lets me pre-emptively “renew” them
* It provides a nifty, whizzy interface for doing all this, including the ability to change the expiration date, per-feed in the Dinosaur Warn-i-nator.

Do-able? Appealing? Are there Mac or web-based reader apps out there that already do this in some form or fashion?