Daylight ahead for RSS writers and readers

Jenny writes:

What I do see as the bigger issue is that this provides a path for further news aggregator development in Radio . I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what it means for RSS news aggregation in general, but I believe quite strongly that some form of aggregation will become part of our everyday information lives in the future, so I welcome any and all roads that lead to that day. [ The Shifted Librarian ]

I believe the same. It's important to note that Radio's aggregator is one way forward, but not the only way. I just grabbed a copy of AmphetaDesk and -- omigosh -- it's written in Perl! I had no idea! It ships as a compiled executable for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but the source is all Perl and is available. The app runs Radio-style, shoveling script-written pages into a local webserver for browser consumption.

This presents a bit of a dilemma for me. I've made my peace with UserTalk, but I'm much faster and more competent in Perl. So it's tempting to do aggregator experimentation in AmphetaDesk. But then, it can't be so easily shared with the Radio community, many of whom will (rightly) prefer not to download and install an extra kit. But, this is a good problem to have: a choice between two viable options.

In any case, the point is that you're right, Jenny. All sorts of different groups will have reasons to tweak both the production and the consumption of RSS. For both writers and readers of RSS, there's daylight ahead.


Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2002/05/10.html#a231