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• Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
• Where did Shoechicken come from?
• Why are you doing this...Shoechicken thing?
• What are the benefits of Shoechicken over traditional aggregation?
• What is reclocating?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Tracing Shoechicken back to its ancient mythical roots, one is immediately confronted with this, the question of all questions. Do we, the creators of Shoechicken, know the answer? Of course not, we can barely tie our own shoe laces!!! (See fig. 1)

fig 1.

Where did Shoechicken come from?
Shoechicken was hatched, and yes we can continue the chicken theme on forever, by a couple of college students at the University of West Florida.

So why are you doing this...Shoechicken thing?
Some people (namely the developers) believe that we are doing it for the fame, fortune, and to further our plans of world domination. Some believe that we have been tasked by divine inspiration. Still others may think that we are giving back to a community which we rely on for free, quality software. Perhaps, the project is solely to fill some academic requirements. Reasonably, one may come to the conclusion that we want to introduce strange words and terminology into a field with an otherwise normal vocabulary (see What is reclocating?). It could be that we are completely bored and have too much time on our hands (this is not the case).
The truth is that we're doing this because it has never been done. The concept of intelligent news aggregation is nothing new, but the approach has never been applied to such varied formats as RSS and Atom. We feel that Shoechicken will fill a void in this area, and provide a valuable time-saving tool capable of adjusting to the interests of its users.

What are the benefits of Shoechicken over traditional aggregation?
Shoechicken's aim is to save time by reclocating content downloaded by RSS and Atom. By reclocating the articles, Shoechicken will provide users with a better idea of what content is of interest to them without having to browse the content themselves. If a user subscribes to twenty feeds, each offering ten articles per day, the user may be inundated with 200+ articles every day. It may take some time for the user to browse this content, and if users only use titles to make their determination to save time, they may overlook articles that may be interesting to them. Shoechicken evaluates articles based on titles, description, and content, and bases its recommendations on a user profile it develops through observation.

What is reclocating?
Reclocating, a term invented based on our work with the Shoechicken, is the process of recommending a location for content within an existing set of content, based upon an intelligent appraisal of the content using past knowledge.