To explain my ideas, let me use example of the famous AllTop.com project. I love visiting user-friendly RSS aggregators. And I think the AllTop website is currently one of the best! But is it really user-friendly?

I'm not going to discuss design of their heavy 300K+ pages. My IE browser crashes after downloading first several ones, but that's not the point. Even their irritating floating banner that hides 10% of my screen is not a serious issue. The main issue for all(!) existing RSS aggregators sites is a conceptual one!

Obviously, the aim of AllTop.com is to allow users reading a lot of interesting sources. "You can think of an Alltop site as a "digital magazine rack" of the Internet" [2].
But don't forget, - before the reading you need to DOWNLOAD the sources! And that's where the biggest problem arises: It's practically impossible to download all the sources quickly! Because traditionally the content is wrapped in a huge layer of HTML formatting and advertising! It's BIG!

It's like you have a free library (Internet). But unable to browse full text of available books (websites) in the library. Simply because opening them takes YEARS!

Do you really need that oversized HTML code and Ads that accompany every webpage? No matter what your answer is, you MUST download all the crap every time you want to read just few sentences of useful content!

So, my first desire was to create an alternative place where people can browse web sources quickly! How? By using a simplified format [4] for webpages, - with No Ads!
There is a striking difference between the click that takes you into slowly downloaded page staffed with tons of advertising, and a compact file with content only!

There are many examples when short versions of websites appeared for users more attractive than original (classic) ones: RSS, Mobile formats, to name a few.
My solution, however, is not yet another special version. In a way, it's the SAME content, - but divided into 3 separate files: Title, Content, and Links/Ads.

The development is easy: While creating even a low-scaled version of full content (be it RSS or mobile one) requires some extra efforts for information design, the mini Content file is simply a part of existing webpage.

Imagine all websites use such short mini files instead of their regular HTML page. Your browser will "fly"! The world of RSS will also be greatly improved, - it will be faster!

Now it's possible to introduce another novelty. While Alltop.com is just a catalog of links(!) to external content, Mini-News.com is a step forward: It displays the best part of that content!

Why not simply to send users to original websites? A short answer is safety!
Mini-News.com is designed with convenience for mobile users in mind. To guarantee that clicking an external link will not take visitors to a multi-megabytes page, size for displayed content is limited to 10K.

In addition, there is protection against viruses that might be a part of webpage!
Mini-News Format [4] forbids using scripts, and even images. (Yes, there is spyware masked as image. Did you know about that?). But just inventing a new format would not be enough for creating a really Next Big Thing. To build a reliable web service, there should be measures for preventing its abusing.

So, Mini-News.com simply removes from displayed content all HTML formatting, excepting few selected tags.
(Very similar to what Twitter.com does).

The same story is about hyperlinks. They are removed as well!
I already hear angry voices: "How dare you to attempt that foundation of the Internet!" Calm down, the proposed "territory without links" is gonna be just a small niche in the Universe. The reason why Mini-News.com uses no external links is that almost always they are ads!

Could you tell me how many ads are present on a destination URL you are going to open?
In contrast, Mini-News.com has no ads! Period! And it has no links, excepting internal navigation, e.g., Home or Next author's post.

Now back to AllTop.
1. It shows links to five recent posts.
Why five? Where that digit came from? My guess is that there was a need to fill empty space at the early stages. Its busy subdomain "moms" features three recent posts. It would be more appropriate to display only one post. That would also encourage people to visit website more often.

2. AllTop aims to select BEST websites for each topic. Apparently, - from the whole Internet. Sounds great! But there are 100 million blogs worldwide. How one is able to define which 100 (out of the 100 mln) websites are the best?
More than a billion people worldwide are now online. Who would claim he knows better what the top 100 people are? Digg? Google?

No matter how many advisers AllTop listens to during its selection process, the final result remains a choice of just one person. Actually, AllTop makes no secret of the fact that it is "highly subjective and judgmental"[2]. It might be understandable if AllTop's team is expert in a certain topic niche. However, they aim to cover ALL topics!

Starting with, to decide who is the best, the AllTop team must READ each published post. But that is not easy thing to do with oversized webpages (see above), - it's practically impossible!

In contrast, Mini-News does not attempt to claim it knows what post is better. It's selection process is easy:

All available space is filled on a "First-claimed First-granted" basis! The "book" contains stories by only the first(!) supporters of the Mini-News idea.
What about the rest of the billion websites out of there? They are another story. From another book :)

3. Alltop has no transparent business model.
Mini-News is a mixture of free and paid posts, as it cannot afford running websites just out of curiosity :). Without financial support, it will simply not exist!

The rules for locating posts on pages are clear:
Sponsors come FIRST! And they may push out free entries from the end of the list.

Order for sponsored posts is based on a similar "First-claimed First-granted" approach. And considering there is a limit of 25 posts per each topic page, one can get quite different result for the same money: The only thing you can achieve with hesitating with your support, is a less favorable location on Mini-News.com for your content!

The last, but not the least point: While AllTop is updated every ten minutes, Mini-News always goes live!
Published content is under direct control of corresponding websites. And if there might be a problem with calling a particular Title file, e.g., because of "404 Not Found" error, it will simply be not shown on Mini-News page. No connection, - no you! That's the life :)

Nevertheless, Mini-News does not compete with AllTop. There always will be people who want to view full versions. And there always will be people who want to save their TIME.