The shelf, or why you don't need to register - yet
First things first: the shelf is simply a container where you put the projects you're interested to track. Just click on the checkbox near the project name to have it added or removed from your shelf.
Once you have at least one project in the shelf, you can use directly the RSS we create for you, just for the projects you have selected. You'll find shelf RSS url just in the shelf's box itself.
But how do we know that you are you, and that this is your shelf?
We could have used the regular registration approach, where you entered your name, your email, your password etc... You could then login and edit your profile/shelf as usual.
We decided to take a much simpler approach, for now, and eventually go to the registration route one time in the future. We use a dead simple cookie based system to recognize you. Once you open your shelf, we send you a cookie (that never expires) with a uniquely generated ID - your shelf id, indeed.
No username, no password, nothing.
There are, of course, some drawbacks; we assumed that the computer where you read the feed is the same used to browse the Appdate site. And that could not be the case... or you could have deleted your cookies, "loosing" the shelf. We think that as far as the tracked project number remains quite low, we could take the risk of having someone have to re-create his/her shelf.
Soon you'll be able to re-use your shelf id, even if you clean up your cookies; remember, in fact, that the shelf id is appended on the shelf's RSS URL.
The Appdate team