METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR FACILITATING WEB CONTENT AGGREGATION INITIATED BY A CLIENT OR SERVER

1 . A computer-implemented method for facilitating Web content aggregation initiated by a client, comprising the steps of:

creating a Web site aggregation list;

spidering at least one Web site in the aggregation list from a user-identified computer;

merging at least one attribute of content of the at least one spidered Web site with at least one attribute of content of another Web site; and

displaying the merged attributes to a user.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the aggregation list includes at least one URL associated with the at least one Web site.

3 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising permitting the user to view original Web site content associated with the merged attributes.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising filtering the content of the at least one spidered Web site to obtain the at least one attribute of content of the at least one spidered Web site.

5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein filtering the content of the at least one spidered Web site comprises applying a de-chrome script to the content of the at least one spidered Web site.

6 . The method of claim 5 , wherein filtering the content of the at least one spidered Web site further comprises suppressing content that does, or does not, contain a set of key words and phrases, or content that does not pass a natural-language-based Boolean filter, along with content zones such as title, first paragraph, first 10 sentences, first 1000 words, second paragraph, second 5 sentences, second-through-fifth paragraph, in any combination, and/or zones pertaining to XML or HTML tags present in the content.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the aggregation list stores a recommended time and update frequency for re-spidering the at least one Web site.

8 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

running a search for updates to Web sites in the aggregation list in the background and

notifying the user when new or updated content is available.

9 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising creating a hash of content of the at least one spidered Web site to create a compact string representing the spidered content.

10 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising

comparing the hash of content of the at least one spidered Web site to a hash of the content of the at least one spidered Web site from another user-identified computer or server and

re-spidering the at least one Web site if the comparison does not match.

11 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising merging the at least one attribute of content of the at least one spidered Web site with streaming news content.

12 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising requesting content updates from Web sites listed in an aggregation list of a server.

13 . The method of claim 12 , further comprising:

uploading a notification to the server that content has been downloaded;

searching the server to obtain new content from another client; and

downloading the new content from the another client.

14 . The method of claim 13 , wherein the content that has been downloaded from the server and the new content from another client is in a hashed format.

15 . A non-transitory computer readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a processing system, cause the processing system to perform a method comprising:

creating a Web site aggregation list;

spidering at least one Web site in the aggregation list from a user-identified computer;

merging at least one attribute of content of the at least one spidered Web site with at least one attribute of content of another Web site; and

displaying the merged attributes to a user of the user-identified computer.

16 . The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 15 , wherein the aggregation list includes at least one URL associated with the at least one Web site.

17 . The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 15 , further comprising permitting the user to view original Web site content associated with the merged attributes.

18 . The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 17 , further comprising creating a hash of content of the at least one spidered Web site to create a unique string representing the spidered content.

19 . A computer-implemented method for facilitating Web content aggregation initiated by a server, comprising the steps of:

receiving a plurality of Web site aggregation lists from a plurality of user-identified computers;

merging the plurality of Web site aggregation lists into a global aggregation list;

spidering at least one Web site in the global aggregation list;

merging at least one attribute of content of the at least one spidered Web site with at least one attribute of content of another Web site; and

transmitting the merged at least one attribute of content to at least one of the plurality of user-identified computers.

20 . The method of claim 19 , further comprising associating each of the plurality of the Web site aggregation lists in the global aggregation list with a corresponding at least one profile of a user-identified computer.

21 . The method of claim 20 , wherein the at least one profile of a user-identified computer is a plurality of profiles for a user, and wherein a user-identified computer has multiple display mechanisms for different profiles.

22 . The method of claim 19 , further comprising, notifying a client that new content is available.