The whole idea of RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, was that it was supposed to simplify the mass of new information available to us on the Web. Subscribe to the RSS feed of your favorite websites, and you can keep up with them all in one place (that is an RSS reader like Google Reader, Future Boy’s favorite). Well, as anyone who uses an RSS reader knows, it didn’t quite work out the way we’d hoped. Add up all those RSS feeds, and you’ve still got a time-consuming list of stories to plough through.
Ari Newman, co-founder of the media monitoring startup FiltrBox, is out to fix that. “We are dying in an avalanche of information,” says Newman. “There might be only one article that matters in that RSS feed.” Newman and his co-founder, developer Tom Chikoore, created FiltrBox as a private beta site in February; its official launch was last week. Newman is hoping his four-person, Boulder-based company can crack a new market for customized searches of online media — and find the handful of articles that matter to you.

FiltrBox allows users to set up multiple, repeating searches of mainstream media outlets and blogs, as well as sites like Twitter and FriendFeed. Business owners can get results for for their industry, competitors, their business name, their markets. A myriad of other features are also included, ranging from a widget to stick on your company web site to iPhone-friendly daily e-mails.

“Our target audience is small businesses,” Newman says. Small business owners and employees can take advantage of FiltrBox Team, which allows up to six users to share an account with up to 100 customized searches, and one year of article memory for a monthly fee of $100. The program learns its user’s preferences over time through an article rating and “noise control” system, allowing a business to hone in on particular aspects of a market.

At least one small business owner agrees. Tim Stephens, CEO of ToolPax, began using the site after seeing Newman give a demo six months ago. “It’s absolutely a critical piece of our sales and marketing effort,” says Stephens. “We’ve been using FiltrBox to get industry intelligence and feedback on ToolPax. I use my BlackBerry as my alarm clock, and the e-mails come right in when I wake up. Bam! FiltrBox has my list and I can keep track of my business. I don’t have to go anywhere.”

—Meg Massey

Ever had a weather report tell you that it’s sunny outside, only to glance outside your window and see rain? Before you blame the forecaster, consider that the climate can vary wildly from neighborhood to neighborhood – and most forecasts use only one data point per city.

Help may be on the way. NanoWeather, an Oklahoma-based company, says its new weather forecasting software is as much as 70% more reliable than traditional methods. Rather than go into competition with services such as weather.com, the company aims to provide tailored predictions for local microclimates.

Typical forecasts rely on long-term statistics and weather observation, according to Matt Haugland, NanoWeather’s founder. The observing usually happens at airports, so forecasts are generally accurate there, but less so farther away.

Haugland’s product uses high-resolution topographical maps, and factors in everything from small hills to the type of grass on the ground. Even New York City’s Central Park has a unique microclimate compared to the rest of the city, Haugland says. All the vegetation and trees affect the wind and temperature. And while picnickers may not be such a lucrative potential market for microclimate information, large weather-dependent operations such as agricultural and construction businesses might.

Haugland, who has a PhD from the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology, started the company in 2006 after winning $25,000 at the Collegiate Inventors Competition, and just completed a commercial version of his product. NanoWeather will license out the software, and also sell individual forecasts. It is currently in talks with a Houston energy company who would like to predict the weather for its windmills. –Herman Wong

A couple of interesting pieces on Second Life, that much-loved, much-hyped, much-maligned virtual world, caught FB’s eye yesterday. First was this story from FB alma mater Time.com on how making your Second Life avatar do certain things can actually change your behavior in your first life — a perfectly normal practice, apparently, connected to our deep-seated need to wear masks and try out different roles throughout our lives:

The possibilities are — virtually — endless. Inhabit buffed-up versions of yourself to lose weight, cuter versions of yourself to gain confidence, or older versions to start putting money away for the future (that last one is being studied at Stanford now).

Coincidentally, along came this story from the London Guardian on how Spanish teenagers are starting to take their embarassing ailments to doctors in Second Life:

Spanish health authorities launched a virtual portal through the Second Life website yesterday designed to help young people too embarrassed to speak to a doctor about sexually transmitted disease or a drug problem.

The avatar: Sort of like the grown-up version of using a doll to communicate with kids about abuse, right? If the Spanish experiment works, FB foresees a big market for similar teen health care in the U.S.

FB has long said that living in the Bay Area is like living five minutes in the future. Sometimes it’s also like living fifty years in the past. Take this story on a new company called Airship Ventures that is planning to bring Zeppelin back to San Francisco. Not Page and Plant, alas, but the Hindenberg version, albeit with safer fuel:

At 246 feet in length, the Zeppelin NT will be 50 feet longer than the largest blimp, and will hold up to 12 passengers. Similar airships are already operating safely in Japan and Germany, the company says.

Airship will offer its rides for “flightseeing” tours (yes, that’s what they call them), as well as media and science operations. Apparently, flights will be available for between $250 and $500, around the same price as a ride in a hot balloon.

The startup already has two things essential for success here in Techland: $8 million in venture funding and praise from Esther Dyson. FB can’t wait to climb aboard.

Speaking of cars of the future — and strategies to avoid the $4 gallon — the New York Times has a report on a couple of canny Davids trying to slay the uber-Goliath of the oil industry. Los Gatos, Calif. entrepreneurs Floyd Butterfield and Thomas Quinn have created the Micro-Fueller, a washer-dryer sized fueling station that creates ethanol — not out of corn, but a patented mixture of yeast and super-cheap industrial-grade sugar from Mexico. The cost: $1 a gallon. The ethanol will work in most any recent model car, no conversion required.

The cost of the device: about $5,000 with California alternative energy rebates. At that price, you’d have to make 1,667 gallons of ethanol before you start seeing ROI. That will come down with mass production, of course. But even at that price, it’s a bargain if you’re bearish on the price of oil. And let’s not forget the 100% markup you could make on $2 gallons of ethanol for all your neighbors. Forget lemonade stands: homebrew fuel is the new summertime moneyspinner.

The most important question — does the ethanol pass muster from the driver’s seat? The Times doesn’t say, which suggests either lazy reporting or a reluctance on the inventors’ part to offer test drives. It would be a shame if it were the latter, for this is a fascinating development that deserves a lot of attention. Future Boy is on the case.

UPDATE: The folks at E-fuel (that’s Butterfield and Quinn’s company) pinged FB to say they will be officially unveiling the Micro-Fueller to the press next week, and to invite him to sit down with the inventors in Los Gatos. Stay tuned, and let me know your thoughts on whether cheap NAFTA sugar is the fuel of the future.

Stereotype alert: not only does Future Boy drive a Prius, he also unapologetically sips lattes while doing so. (What, you don’t like fuel economy and frothy milk?)

Since his is a first edition, 2002 model, FB is able to feel smugly superior to Johnny-come-latelys. This weekend, as San Francisco gas prices climbed above the $4-a-gallon psychological barrier (almost as much as a Venti latte!), a curious coincidence happened: four of FB’s neighbors suddenly swapped their SUVs for second-edition Priuses (Priusi? Prii?), all of them as blue as this blue state. It turned out to be the result of a long wait list, a recent shipment to the local Toyota, and a lack of neighborly color coordination. Still, it was timely proof that the Prius’ popularity shows no signs of dipping.

Today Toyota announced that the mark 3 Prius would be unveiled at next year’s Detroit auto show. Early reports suggest that it will improve its fuel economy by 10 mpg, from 45 to 55, despite having more horsepower and length. Not bad, but not as great as the 94 mpg Toyota says it’s aiming for.

That should mean no drop in business for the small PHEV companies — those plucky bright sparks who will gussy up your hybrid by adding a larger battery and plug-in capability, despite a lack of cooperation from Toyota. Kits from little guys like Hymotion and eDrive purportedly take your mpg into the 70-90 range. In other words: lots more free lattes.

Step forward and receive your Congressional medals, small web-based enterprises. A hearing in the House of Representatives today, featuring Google and Amazon, was a love fest for the little guy. Both companies claimed they wouldn’t be where they are today — propping up the online economy — without you.

“There are millions of small businesses, millions of Web site publishers, and billions of people interacting on the ‘long tail’ around products and services catering to individual tastes and personalities,” said David Fischer, Google’s VP of online sales. “And the economic potential in this long tail is driving some of the most successful and innovative businesses online today.”

Amazon’s spokesman pointed out that an increasing percentage of its $11 billion revenue comes from marketplace fees — skimmed off the top of those billions of used item resellers. Future Boy, whose ten-year-old Amazon addiction is now centered largely around buying used books, and whose fiance just yesterday became an Amazon reseller, couldn’t agree more.

Today’s tip from Future Boy: if you dislike your current browser, or simply want the last word (so far) in web browsing, download the free Firefox version 3 Beta 5. Beta? Wait, doesn’t that mean unfinished? It certainly does — and yet this beta is remarkably solid. Unlike Firefox 2, it doesn’t suck up your computer’s memory. Loading is faster than ever. If this is a beta, FB can’t wait to see the final version.

Staying in a hotel just off the Champs-Elysees might have seemed like a good idea, but it actually put Futur Garçon fairly far away from all that Web startup action in the Eigth Arrondissement. So FG was grateful when entrepreneurs could come to him, such as Benoit Bergeret. The 45-year-old CEO was FG’s first interview, and he suggested lunch in a Champs-Elysees hangout called Laduree, an elegant, 18th century establishment known for its pastries. Laduree retains the refined air of the aristocratic apartment block it once was, and its vol-au-vents and white wine selection made FG feel he had truly arrived in France.

Bergeret is the founder of two related companies: Paris-based Realeyes 3D, and San Francisco-based Quipit. After some negotiation between members of his boards, he now spends three weeks of the month in San Francisco, and one in Paris, which sounds to FG like an unbeatable arrangement. He showed FG his product, which turns camera cellphone snaps into PDFs as effortlessly as the French bake pastry. And he told FG three things that would become themes throughout the week of French startup interviews. First, that French universities churned out people with great technical knowledge that startups can take advantage of, especially a startup based around image processing. Secondly, that it’s harder to retain employees in San Francisco than in Paris, where there is way less turnover. Thirdly, that the French have no clue how to push their products. “We don’t do marketing in France,” he said. “We do lunches.”

That is changing, of course, as France itself becomes — ever so slowly — a more entrepreneurial culture. When FG asked Bergeret of an underdeveloped area where U.S. companies could make a killing, he thought for a minute and said: “air conditioners.” France gets hot in the summer, and there is no AC in private homes. “The big guys think there’s no residential market,” he said. “Come with a green proposition, make it none too expensive,” — and you’ll have a winner. Just remember to take your clients out to lunch.

Apologies for the radio silence: Future Boy was on assignment in Paris, meeting a surprisingly large number of web entrepreneurs. I say surprising, because FB — or to give him his Parisian name, Futur Garçon — did not expect to find a lot of high-tech startups in the City of Light. Great food, fashion and Gallic snobbery, oui; hard-working, forward-thinking online businesses burning the midnight oil, non.

But that’s one stereotype FG was quick to dispel. It turns out that Paris is becoming the European answer to Silicon Valley, with a critical mass of hot tech companies that are gaining international following — and international funding. More importantly, its Internet infrastructure is light years ahead of anything the U.S. can offer. For a mere thirty euros a month (about $45), you can have DSL service delivered to your home and office at a blazingly fast 1.25 gigabits. But wait! There’s more! You also get a wi-fi router, all the TV channels you can eat delivered over the same pipe, and free phone service to 70 countries. (It’s VOIP, but nobody cares for such acronyms — all your average Frenchman knows is that you plug your phone into the back of your DSL box, and you’re done.)

Amazingly, this is all the doing of one entrepreneur — 40-year-old Xavier Niel, an unassuming, constantly smiling man whom FG met one Friday at his headquarters near St. Augustin in Paris’ trendy 8th Arrondissement. Niel is the founder of Iliad, the company that sells that astonishingly cheap service described above, which is called (ironically, but not too ironically) “Free.” As he sat down in a combination conference room and living room in Iliad’s basement, the better to demo its product, Niel told FG he ran the most profitable company in the French market. Astonishingly, the entire payroll is financed with a mere 4% of its revenues. Free has 3 million subscribers, rising rapidly — and is giving France Telecom, the stodgy state-sponsored market leader, a run for its money.

How can that be? Niel is offering a top-of-the-range data service, every form of communication you could possibly want except cellphone coverage (though he plans to expand into that too), for a bargain basement price. Indeed, Niel says he is often visited by representatives of U.S. cable and wireless companies, who tell him they would charge their customers three times what he’s charging for this service — if they had the infrastructure to offer such a thing.

Niel not only refuses to go above the 30 euro threshold, but he also keeps adding services at no extra cost. For example, you can now plug a video camera into the back of your Free box, and presto: you’re broadcasting your own TV channel to other Free subscribers. Price? It’s all part of your 30 euro bill. What gives?

First of all, Iliad keeps its equipment and software costs low by building everything itself. Niel was proud to show FG the ramshackle, do-it-yourself innards of the boxes the company uses. “We’re like Apple without the cool design,” he says. He called the remote control that comes with the Free box “the least beautiful but most powerful remote in the world.” Iliad engineers wrote all the software the company runs on. “The French are pretty good at software,” he says, citing the educational system’s emphasis on science and technology.

His entire optical fiber system runs on two Cisco routers. Back in the dotcom bust of 2001, Niel — then a small businessman — bought up tons of optical fiber infrastructure for a song. Nobody thought it was the future any more. They were wrong, and Niel was right — as he seems to be about many things, including keeping prices dependably low.

Now Niel is spending 300 million euros building yet more optical fiber, overcoming the “last mile” problem, and running it direct into every building in Paris via the city’s sewers. He expects the project to be complete, and Paris to be an all-optical fiber city, by the end of 2009. He even expects people to start using their ultra-speedy service to run their own Internet Service Providers out of their apartments. He doesn’t mind the competition. “Fiber is light,” he says. “There’s nothing speedier. People may still be using this system in 500 years.” Optical fiber in the sewers — a perfect metaphor for the digital renaissance currently taking place in the City of Light.