Some sites publish very sporadically. Some are like jack rabbits on dates with their publishing, especially if they have multiple authors. What I’d like is for NNW to allow me to specify a minimum and a maximum refresh window. NNW then parses the feeds that I have in my subscription list and ascertains their post frequency. If it’s faster than my minimum refresh rate, then set it to the minimum. (Just because Lifehacker posts every 42 seconds doesn’t mean that I want NNW refreshing it that fast.) If, however, a site like Merlin’s 5ives.com only posts every few weeks or months, I want it to check at least weekly or monthly just to be sure. But in between there, I’d like NNW to be smart enough to be able to update the feeds that need to be updated based on the likelihood that they have posted new content. This would make subscription refreshes much faster, too, and allow me to get in, read my stuff, and get out.

One of the things that I think is really tough for people is trusting computers. But in the past little while I have come to embrace this. I trust my reminders to Sandy (http://www.iwantsandy.com). I trust my iPhone keyboard to correct my mistypes. As a result, I have reduced my baseline anxiety about appointments and tasks and I can type like a mofo on my iPhone. I think computers are getting to the point where they can really be trusted with a lot of this stuff, and the more that I can delegate to a machine or the cloud, the better.