Mates is a very interesting, yet-to-debut social networking engine based on proximity that can be tied into a cell phone, IM, GPS or other personal tracking systems.

Imagine what it would be like if..

• Your instant messaging program could automatically create and populate buddy lists based on the people in your classroom, your office building, or even your neighborhood.
• Your mobile phone could receive a text message when old friends you rarely see happen to be nearby.
• Your laptop computer or handheld device connected you to a live feed of information about nearby people and events.

Well, with Mates this doesn’t seem to be too far away.

Read more at the Mates site

RSS readers have lately been appearing all over the place, however, until recently I wasn’t able to find the perfect one. My needs are not huge. I want a reader which can synchronize feeds and read posts between several PCs, have a useful and selectable notification mechanism so I don’t miss important news, but still don’t get bothered with less important ones, display feeds in a tree without favicons, be robust and fairly fast, provide descent search functionality and saved searches, flag news items for easy follow up and review.

I have tried most of the existing Windows and web based aggregators, and each one had some of these missing. I recently checked the new version of RSS Bandit and my quest for the perfect RSS reader seems to have come to an end. RSS Bandit features all I need and provides even more nice goodies like integrated Feedster and Google searches.

If you are not completely satisfied with your reader, give RSS Bandit a spin. You won’t regret it.