Forum Moderators: not2easy
Im a newzcrawler fan, mentioned in the article. For quicj access to news articles these desktop readers are great for pinpointing just what you want. They also represent an opportnuity for content site publishers, by creating RSS feeds and publicizing them.
It is now much easier than ever before, with a bit of scripting or refining ability to create your own highly relevant portal on your own site using RSS feeds, aggregating and refining them together.
She hones in on an onteresting point. Why the bigger sites like MSN etc DONT have RSS feeds is that the news viewers represent a competitor to portals. The implications are fascinating for the politics of content delivery on the net, and its the first time that i know of that a mainstream news source has taken up the point beyond blogging.
Given that, Google news has taken over as my news research tool at the moment and i still pop into blogdex and daypop, showing that portal like news tools on the Web rather than the desktop, if done correctly by their content not being influenced by money and commercial networks, are not down and out just yet.
The only complaint I have is that I can't filter out the off-topic stuff from these site. In other words, the preferences are based on website selection rather than topic selection. Since RSS is based on XML and there are plenty of schemas out there which include a definition of "Topic" for an article, I don't understand why they don't simply ad a filter to allow us to choose our topics rather than allow everything from a particular website. To me, that would be far more useful.
Some aggregators provide search facilities now, so you only see what items your search crietria ask for. the new RSS protocols are making it easier to do this with more meta information fields. But yes, at one time, someone would have to download the entire feed.
The technology, mainly open source driven, is imporving all the time. We may see what you want more in future.
