Seen via Compendium, SBC’s new RSS reader: Project D.U.. I guess D.U. stands for Digital Universe.

proj·ect · d. u.
(noun) 1. a reader populated with headlines pulled from across the web.
2. relater of news and rumors
3. hiding place for next month’s topic of conversation.
4. the center of your Digital Universe. Synonyms: middleman, informant, eavesdropper.

First off, the site. It feels like it is trying way too hard to be ‘Hip’. Almost all the buttons you can click are animated in some way. Luckily none of them burst into flames. Next, the Project D.U. Reader. I personally found it to be pretty lame in a bunch of ways.

• The interface leaves much to be desired. It just feels clunky.
• When you look at the lists of posts for a blog it only shows you excerpts, even if the blog provides full posts. Clicking on their ‘read more’ link opens up the actual post .

• No way to export your subscriptions.
• No support for enclosures.
• Kinda slow and clunky.
• When it couldn’t resolve a hostname right away it told me that the feed was bad.

• Project D.U. is a stupid name.

And as I was about to close my browser window on the site, I noticed this on their about page:

One of the best features of this site, not unlike the advent of color television, is the Project D.U. Reader. It’s filled with headlines from some of the best blogs you’ve never heard of. In fact, we’ve spent hundreds, maybe thousands of hours scouring the web, trying to find the most intriguing sites the world has to offer. To be fair, we pay the favored blogs a bit each month for the right to use their stuff. But we don’t edit what they say, that would be a very un-fun read.

Wait, they are paying the blogs they list money?? How can I get in on that racket.