Date: 09/09/05 (Mozilla)    Keywords: rss, xml, google

Talk about circular thinking...

In the ever-burgeoning world of the Internet, the word "aggregation" is of the utmost importance, as everything else basically revolves around it. The provision of the content for it, the networkings by which such is provided to the end user, the needed improvements of the aforementioned: all 3 of those everlasting issues play a key role in the continuing expansion of the Internet, especially when it comes to periodically-updated content, as in news, editorials, and so forth.

Which is why I'm eyeing the continual developments of "news feeds", particularly of the RSS, Atom, and Podcast type.

For some odd reason, it seems as if those three formats are only residing within the reserve of bloggers (mostly in the English-speaking world), a few newspapers, a few email groups (provided by Google Groups for its classic Usenet newsgroups....which begs the question: does *anybody* use Usenet or newsgroups anymore?!), and not much else.

I mean, yes, the Internet public is beginning to switch from the old newsgroups, from which some of today's best and brightest stars in the IT industry claim some of their personal roots, to the idea of viewing posts without having to fill up their own inboxes. Furthermore, the feed formats in question are beginning to expand as well: hopefully, they'll have Photo/Image and Email-List RSS feeds in the very near future, as they also have Media RSS (predominately audio, and most recently video) and so forth.

Thus, to bring it home, Mozilla Firefox (here here!), in order to keep up with the development and expansion of RSS (which has basically become a synonym for "news feeds"), has to keep on its toes in this wise. What I'm hoping this time around (with Firefox 1.5 beta) is that they (at Mozilla), or some third-party XUL aficionado, will come up with a brand new feed aggregation extension which will be both simplified (unlike WizzRSS), declutsified (unlike InfoRSS), and unlimited in both functionality and feed access (unlike Sage, which is the only one doing much of anything for me at present). Same goes (probably more) for Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Sunbird/Calendar.

Furthermore, I'm hoping that newsgroups (of the classic news:// protocol) will convert to the .xml (the one responsible for RSS, OPML, Atom, and so forth) format in the future, insothat, again, people will be able to access the latest discussions and postings without filling up their inbox.

Speaking of which, I just came up with an idea within the midst of this writing:

Is there some sort of standalone RSS/newsgroup client which can handle feeds of all types?

Or, furthermore....would it make sense to relegate RSS feeds to the news:// (newsgroup) protocol, since RSS feeds are basically the same exact thing as news feeds?

Damn, I'm thinking in circles, lol.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/mozilla/316970.html