I have worked out a content extraction algorithm. Given any web pages, it will extract the contents while throwing away the ads, navigation bar, header, footers, etc.<p>Here is one way to package this algorithm into a useful website. User will add url links via the website or by importing from a specified del.icio.us tags. The site will extract the contents from these links as a rss feed. User could subscribe to this feed in their mobile news reader. We're thinking of making this a subscription-based service at $3.99/mo. The target audiences will be the ones who will download mobile feed readers.<p>Benefits:
1. user could read 'pure content' from their phones, no ads, just the content.
2. the contents, with all related images, could be pre-downloaded into the feed reader. so whenever you got a minute or two, you could just pull out your phone and read.<p>Questions:
1. What do you think of this idea? Good? Bad? Dumb?
2. Is the $3.99/mo priced right?<p>Thanks a lot,
Alex
"Wrapper induction" (Do a Google Scholar search for it) has been around for a while (Kushmerick, 1997). It's used by search engines, etc, quite successfully, but I don't know of anyone who is able to make a living selling it standalone.<p>Independent of that, I don't think it's enough of a value-add for me to pay for, plus, you're running into copyright concerns left and right.
Regarding subscription pricing, if you are going to charge and you want to keep the price under $10/mo, charge <i>at least</i> $5.99/mo because a) you can get away with it, and b) $3.99/mo could make your product seem cheap. IMO $5.99 is close to the cost of a fast food meal, which most people don't hesitate when faced with.<p>I don't know how much thought you put into the $3.99/mo, but there is a lot of research out there that supports pricing higher for reasons none other than to create the perception of value. Interesting topic to look into, either way.
You will need to be very careful about which sites you allow users to extract content from as many larger sites have TOS which prevent this type of activity. You could be opening yourself up to some nasty DMCA take down notices depending on how you plan on displaying/redistributing the scraped content.
Instapaper.com does this, more or less. Their basic service is free, but they (he actually, unless he's expanded lately) sell an iPhone app with additional usability features and offline reading.<p>It's a really useful thing, but probably a bit shady in the legal area with ToSes.
I don't know if this would make money as a web service, but I think you are right to try it -- it could work.<p>Personally, as a developer, I would be more interested in licensing the algorithm or code from you. In my case the potential use would be for a desktop application, that is closed source. Essentially it would be a filter for a local file search engine, which is part of a larger product. Would you be interested in this ? It would not be an exclusive arrangement, so you could continue to persue other revenue methods.<p>Also, I suggest that you test the algorithm to see if the amount of content stripped and tossed is a good identifier of spam emails, if the algorithm is fast enough it may have use for that.
If you copy other peoples' content and host it from your servers, that's copyright infringement. It doesn't matter if you call it an RSS feed or if you just copy it exactly.<p>What you could do is offer people software that downloads web pages but strips the ads. This could be a neat feature of an RSS reader, or perhaps a plugin to another RSS reader, but I doubt you will be able to sell this on its own.
Sounds like you're going to be violating some Terms of Service that users of a software like adBlock skirt because they're just private citizens.<p>Verdict: if your software is good, you'll get your pants sued off. But, I assume since you didn't post a link to a demo, you're a business guy with an idea and not much code. So I doubt you'll have many users, much less legal problems!