The world of Information Syndication has grown massively and even though there are over 9 million blogs (with over 40,000 new blogs per day) and a massive amount of other information being syndicated via feeds (e.g. news, stock prices, jobs, marketing information, etc.) no one seems to be making it any easier for the information to be used, found, and merged.

Henry will provide innovations in the area of feed subscription and reading. As well as making feeds reading truly cross-platform, location independent, and intelligent, Henry also innovates in the area of “meta” feeds, which simply do not exist at the moment. The benefits of Henry are obvious: improved access to relevant information where and when it is needed. Context-based information that can be retrieved anywhere, at anytime, using a multitude of devices. Henry will make Information Syndication, and the usage of the massive amount of information available, genuinely ubiquitous and simply a joy to use.

The core components of the system are:

• The Reaper and Updater: Using intelligent sliding-window scheduling the Updater will ensure the central database is updated as feeds are updated while minimising wasteful calls to unchanged information. The Reaper, which finds new feeds on the web, will use autonomic technologies to provide a powerful feed finding system with easy management and maintenance.
• Henry Core: The core will provide user account services for synchronising a users data across multiple clients and devices. A central directory will allow users to find and subscribe to a multitude of feeds while a feed generator will allow feeds to be converted from one source type to another so that any client can understand the feed. The Meta-Feed generator will allow users to merge and splice multiple feeds into one, filtering out certain topics and so creating useful, intelligent feeds just for their own use. The User-Centric Services will allow users to influence the content analysis system by providing voting and tagging features. The Feed Analysis and Indexing Service provides powerful search and automatic tagging and categorisation of feed information. Finally the central database houses all of the information so as to be available at all times.
• Web Services Interface: Using a standardised interface the Henry Core will be exposed to the web via Web Services. These Web Services will allow 3^rd party clients to interface with Henry. Many applications can then be built on top of Henry.
• Web Client: This provides an end-user interface which does not require any special skills to use. Users may sign up for accounts and personalise their feed subscriptions. The interface will use leading technologies to provide a desktop application like experience over the web.