I had started a post about my experience playing with RSS aggregators, but then due to a horrid twist of fate, my broswer managed to eat it.

Its just as well though, because after doing a little digging, I realize that the things that bother my most about RSS aggregators result from the shortcomings in the protocol.

I can only hope that:
a) The new version that is being hashed out addresses these shortcomings.
b) The new spec is quickly adopted by those making tools to produce and process RSS feeds.

The primary annoyances:

1) RSS 0.91 Does not guarantee the presence of a unqiue identifier for each item in the feed, especially not one that remains constant across time. Some items may include the permalink for the item in question, but others may contain no link at all, or a link to a page refered to in the item. As a result, there is no way to filter feeds and only show the latest version of a given item. This is verry annoying.

Part of the appeal of an RSS aggregator is that it provides.a way to streamline ones consumption of blogs. Seing the same post over and over because an author has made repeated updates perturbs the flow.

2) RSS 0.91 appearantly doesn’t include a timestamp with items, so that all that can be reported to the user is the time the aggregator picked up the item from the XML feed. Not much help if you have returned to your computer after a weekend away.

I am sure people with more experience have their own issues. In anycase, I have pretty much concluded that aggregation of RSS 0.91 feeds is probably going to annoy me rather than make my life easier.

3 men detained for hours in Florida terror scare – timesunion.com

“I appreciate someone like her with the courage to do it,” said neighbor Eric Finch. “For anyone to sit around and joke over a cup of coffee about a couple of thousand people being killed — they should be prosecuted just for that.”

So, is should be a crime to joke about something like that in general, or only if you look like you might be an Arab? I wish the reporter had pressed Mr. Finch further.

I have added permalinks to my template.

The little “#” sign at the end of every post links to a permenent copy of the post, so you can link to a specific post without worrying about it scrolling down and off the bottom of the page.

From here on out, I am going to be putting links I find interesting in http://www.geekfun.com/links . This page will be limited to things I think I have something to say about.

Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters

American Tower is selling nearly 2000 old AT&T Long Line microwave locations that are no longer needed thanks to fiber.

I want

WSJ.com – Page One Feature Among the usual paperclips and pencils cluttering the desk of textile-plant engineer Jeff Kivert is a new necessity: 50 pounds of Silly Putty.