Monday, June 30, 2003

There is a tendentious discussion going on in the RSS community about standardization; at least that is what it seems to be about to me.

I don't know much about the internals of RSS so I am lost in the arguments about various versions, capabilities and adaptabilities. To be honest, I really don't want to know those kinds of details. I know I just want it to work and to deliver content to me, my students and my colleagues. I really don't care how it does it. But I do understand personal agendas and it does seem to me as I read the links I find on this issue that there is more to all of this thrashing than a desire for efficiency and standardization.

My advice: fix RSS where it needs it and leave it alone where it doesn't.

I want to focus on functionality. For example, is there a search engine that delivers content in RSS format as the result of a search? There probably is one and I just haven't paid attention.

What I would like is for NetNewsWire (my RSS aggregator of preference) to have a search window, I type in "bagpipes" and get a listing of all the content that, say, Google would normally display in text. I want this INSIDE of an RSS reader so that I don't have to go out of it and into the browser to go to Google to type it in and wait for the hits. The same with Google graphic searches.

This is functionality that I could use each day. Does any major search engine offer this?
1:02:11 PM