Euan reminds me of something. Bear with me.

We, here in the casa, often wake up here at 5 or 6 am, make tea, sit and watch dawn ... or I pull out my iPad and start my daily news-troll.

I don't have my RSS feeds on my iPad. Sure, I could hook up to the web version of Newsblur, but I don't have effective methods of blogging from the iPad, so I just use it like I would a large daily magazine. I simply don't enjoy typing on it. I might push an article or three to Pocket or Evernote, but that's it.

Long lead in. Sorry. Well, I was thinking, given Euan's post ... on iPad, I use Apple's NEWS feature, and I also use Flipboard. NEWS tries to be smart, Flipboard tries to be customizable.

I have to say it: both rot at what they do. I use them, because all the others I've used rot MORE. And they've rotted for as long as I've used them.

So what did Euan remind me of? In the earlier days of blogging, we had a direct line to the programmers of these systems. We'd make suggestions, they'd respond. Better tools, faster.

We need that 'modification vector' back again. These services are not iterating for the user - they're iterating for the broadcasters.

Once upon a time, readers were the audience. We were the priority, not the product.

I'd like to see that again.

[Thank GOD for RSS.]