kuro5hin.org: "Best war reporters: The Russians?" [Jake's Radio 'Blog]

hmmmmm. The Russian Iraq News site has a pretty sharp looking news homepage. Looks like a local cms engine. Another perspective of what is happening. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News didn't mention the American casualty list in the latest fighting. This site says there are 30 dead in the latest fighting

I like the Swim Fan theme because not only is up to standard but also has a easy edit button for adding html links a la blogrolling. That is something that I have been waiting for. When we migrated to the new server this year, I have not touched the theme question. I want to keep things as simple as possible for teachers and have them maintain their own site. The newer default theme provides Managing Editors with easy edit buttons on the home page. Bryan Bell told us in Chicago, that the newer default theme was a "one trick pony". No other theme had easy to edit site buttons like that one. So now, one can have a sharp website but also an easy way to add links to the homepage. Thank You, Bryan!

Joi Ito likes my book is his experiments with RSS this weekend. His summary of the situation regarding the two... [Ben Hammersley.com]

Ben Hammersley's "RSS Hacks" book by O'Reilly came out this week. I am now itiching to buy it.

Jake released a new feature for Manila yesterday, it's worth noting because it's evidence of movement, and evidence of an important new feature in Manila -- its news aggregator.

First, about the new aggregator. Like Radio UserLand, the underlying engine for Manila has always had a news aggregator. Now you can access that aggregator through the Manila user interface. There's a Prefs page where you edit your subscriptions (screen shot), and another page where you view the results of the latest aggregator run (example).

It's a new idea, a workgroup news aggregator. I asked for this feature because I wanted my colleagues at Berkman to have the aggregator experience without having to install software on their machines. That would be too intrusive, at first. Once they get a taste for the functionality, they may want to install their own.

Second, about the new feature. The Manila-hosted aggregator now supports a basic feature that all aggregators support, mySubscriptions.opml. You can access the subscription list for any Manila installation through a predictable url. Lots of applications have been built on this format. Now the Manila aggregator can participate.

Thanks to Roland Tanglao for this feature idea.

[Scripting News]

Looks like Userland is moving.............forward. Looks like Dave Winer's move to Harvard is a win for all of us because he has to use his own product and there is more competition in the weblog market.