Feed manipulation service BlastCasta has released a new feed widget this morning that allows publishers to offer more sophisticated feed subscription options to readers and is highly customizable.
The BlastCasta widget works with or without FeedBurner and provides options to filter your feed by keyword, sort it differently or translate it into any of 23 different languages. There’s tickers and widgets and an API. BlastCasta could be a good option for publishers targeting tech savvy or mainstream international audiences.
Automatic feed translation services are clumsy, we’re sure, but they sure do seem a lot better than nothing. Right now that strikes us as the most useful feature of BlastCasta.
The widget’s small button can be swapped out with your own, there are some options to change the appearance of the drop down widget of options and there’s API level access for developers wishing to dive deep into the functionality.
There are some usability improvements that could be made to the service; the feed combining feature is a nice idea but could use a clearer path to real use cases, for example. Integration with Postrank could be very useful, too. There is a risk that BlastCasta is going to get your feed “all dressed up with nowhere to go.” Feed lovers are very creative people, though, so readers may find useful ways to use this service. There’s certainly miles of room left for innovation in the feed manipulation space. This could be a cool way to make subscribing to your feed a more flexible experience for readers.
To check out the new service, visit BlastCasta’s feed action widget page.
