BoxtheWeb 0.20 has been released, and with it many different new features. One of the most notable, is support for reading lists. Those new to the concept of reading lists may like this TechCrunch article as a starting point. Basically, the idea is to be able to subscribe to lists of what other people subscribe to. The new version of BoxtheWeb includes ‘subscription boxes’, which allow you to subscribe to XOXO, OPML, or even RSS/ATOM feeds and give a list of feeds referenced. Each of these feeds can then either be previewed or added to your own BoxtheWeb screen.

Each BoxtheWeb account also now publishes a public feed of the its boxes in XOXO and OPML format. This feed can be filtered to contain only feeds or by tag. Boxes may be marked private so that they are not added to this feed. There is no direct mention of the email address anywhere in the URL or the file, only an MD5 hash (although passing an actual address instead of a hash will work, and result in a feed that contains the email address in ownerName). You can see examples of these feeds by clicking the XOXO or OPML links beside ‘Reading List’ in my sidebar.