On the Mark: 2/28/2003

	Friday, February 28, 2003

Adding Another Newsfeed to Zoe. I wanted to add another newsfeed to Zoe's aggregator this afternoon. From the UI it is kind of an all-or-nothing affair. You can import an entire subscription file and all existing info is replaced. I just wanted to add a single new feed to those already indexed. I found a pretty simple way to do this. Note: this works fine for now, but I'm sure the UI will provide something better pretty soon. At any rate, Zoe keeps track of all the subscriptions in a special file located in: \[wherever you installed Zoe]\Library\SZ\RSS\[big hex name]\subscriptions.txt. That file is pretty easy to edit, it is just a list of URLs from which to retrieve the XML documents representing a newsfeed. I'm not sure if Zoe picks up changes right away or not. I shut Zoe down, then restarted it. The new feed shows up in Zoe's list. It should get scanned indexed before too long.
3:32:55 PM

Last Configuration Handler is a slick configuration handler framework for turnining .config properties into objects. [via simplegeek]
3:19:19 PM

Zoe Is Aggregating Local Newsfeeds! It looks like Zoe's aggregator is starting to kick in now, a few hours after I launched it. It is still scanning a bunch of feeds that are not mine (as determined by examining Zoe's .channel files). On the other hand, more of my feeds are starting to show up and are getting indexed. This is great. My experiment with local newsfeeds is a success. My next step is to also use these in NewsGator.
2:53:23 PM

Sharing Newsfeeds. A couple of days ago I suggested it might be nice if various aggregators could share a common set of newsfeeds rather than each performing their own scans and retaining their own local copies of each. This morning I hacked some Radio code to save a copy of each newsfeed as it is scanned. Each feed is saved in a directory that can be served from Radio's internal webserver. I also generated a modified subscriptions file that points to the local copy of each newsfeed rather than the original source. I imported this alternate subscription file into Zoe and Zoe seemed to handle it just fine. It's RSS Assistant page properly lists all of the local newsfeeds. So far so good.

It looks like Zoe scans the feeds in alphabetical order (based on the URL). It scans the first feed just fine, but then things seem to go haywire. Zoe is scanning feeds that I know nothing about, feeds that are not in my subscription file. I have no idea why it is trying to go after these feeds.

11:08:54 AM

On Barbed Wire and Patent Law. I was reading the Trademark Blog this morning and ran across a pointer to the history of barbed wire (a heavily patented and hotly debated technology during the late 1800s). I found it interesting, because I grew up in DeKalb, Illinois. Anyone growing up in DeKalb eventually learns about the town's involvement with the invention and production of barbed wire. Streets, schools, and businesses bear the names of Haish, Ellwood, and Glidden - all men behind the production of barbed wire. What really caught my attention, however, was the philanthropy of these men. All were comitted to supporting to charities. Two were instrumental to building the school which eventually became Northern Illinois University.

Two things strike me from this reading. First, Haish, Ellwood, and Glidden were all entrepreneurs. They took large risks to develop a new technology and produce a product. Glidden fought a long battle to protect his patent; he deserved the patent because of the risks he took. When you recognize there are more than 500 barbed wire patents, you can hardly blame him for trying to protect his stake in the industry. The second thing that strikes me is that these men cared about their community and gave back to it. Something about that makes me feel OK about their patent holding. There is a difference between an individual's use of patent law and a corporation's use of patent law. Corporations may give away money to charity, but they lack soul. Thus, they are not capable of being truly philanthropic. Individuals, on the other hand, are capable of philanthropism. Not sure what I am trying to conclude other than my being OK with individuals holding patents for truly innovative technologies (i.e. not business methods) when those individuals take substantial risks to develop those technologies.

9:43:41 AM