Prachaya Phaisanwiphatpong, a 20-year-old computer engineering student at Kasetsart University, joined with some friends who realised there was a market among Internet users who want up-to-the-minute information.

The programme is called NIM Soft - NIM standing for No Information Missed - and uses RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites as well as personal weblogs, also known as "blogs".

It is based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language), the specialised Web page language that provides structured data to Internet-based applications, and it can be downloaded free at Nimsoft.com

"RSS is the trend," said Prachaya. "Our programming software collects the RSS of all Thai websites. To use the service, users have to sign in as members first, which is free. Then they can set their own lists of websites they want to be updated on."

The group realised that people are consuming more and more information, particularly from news websites and weblogs, or "blogs".

Users are informed immediately whenever their assigned website's information moves or changes. Initially users can set their own list of 20 websites.

They can also call for updated information on a specific topic by using key words similar to the way they use search engines.

"Users can access the updated information of the specific topic they want to know from their assigned websites. This is quicker than using search engine because it provides time-based information which comes with the update as priority," said Prachaya.

Individual users can get headlines and summaries along with links to the places where the stories originate.

News aggregators are very popular in the blogging community as they allow users to keep up with their favourite blogs by checking their RSS feeds and displaying the new items.

Moreover, Prachaya has also developed NIM Soft specifically for news consumers. The service is called Newsty and has been tested since October last year at www.newsty.cpe.ku.ac.th.

Prachaya plans to launch full services at Newsty.com by June. He hopes that this service will generate revenue from advertisements.

"Every website will be promoted to have its own RSS and that will encourage market opportunities for NIM Soft as well.

"I hope to turn the development and free service into a commercial service in the future," said Prachaya.

NIM Soft won first prize for innovative Web services in the National Software Contest 2006 hosted by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) earlier this year.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation