Creating a Blended List

Hi,

We have a general recurring business requirement to present views that mix together content from multiple sources, all within Sitefinity.  For example imagine a section on the home page that displays the latest news item, blog posts (from select blogs), and custom module content in the same list sorted by the publication date of each.

We've approached this with different techniques over the years and I'm interested in other ideas / best practice approaches to this need.

One way we've done it in the past is with custom code that acts on a search index. Another way we've done it (more recently) is with custom code that leverages the APIs to extract content from various sources.  Both approaches have strengths but neither is perfect.

I've been thinking of a solution that uses alternative publishing. This solution would mean (1) create a blog to receive the "blended" content and (2) create a feed to serve into the blog.  Then I think the normal blog widgets would serve most of the display needs.

Has anyone else satisfied this need in a good re-usable way?  Would love to hear opinions on this.