A new version of Sharpreader was released on the 27th of February - somehow I managed to miss the 10 or 20 relevant blog posts I pulled down and only noticed the new release today. The coolest new feature is the random update intervals. Instead of feeds being polled on the hour there is an added 2% leniency, such that the longer sharpreader runs, the further individual blog polls will drift apart. Actually, it isn't really that cool. Given sharpreader's ability to consume half of my already diminished memory, it's lucky if I give it the chance to run for more than 5 hours at a time. 5 hours with an update interval of 2 hours gives me 3 polls (including the poll on load), this should lead to a maximum poll "drift" of 4.8 minutes in either direction (the initial load still polls all feeds at the same time). Not really very effective in spreading out the polls. Sure, the small separation should help overcome the barrage of notifications that would have previously brought my notebook to a crawl - but there are still too many updates coming in over such a short period of time, it still takes the human toll - I can't read them all. Tony Bowden's entry on the suggestion he sent to Luke mentions that "Over time the feeds will all start to drift apart, and be distributed all over the hour." - So if thats the aim, why bother with this silly randomness, why not just distribute the polls evenly over a given period? I'm guessing the answer is because this would be a significant new feature - a great deal more than a simple hack that fits into the current architecture. But I can always dream. Update: Oops, I accidently ran the older version while testing. In the new version my feeds aren't being polled on startup. As yet I'm not sure if this means that the offset was saved (that sounds crazy), or there is no longer an initial poll and I'm going to have to wait two hours for something to happen unless I hit the refresh button myself :)