Hello, I am Carmen

["Carmen" <chv@xxxxxxxxx.xxxx]

Hello,

I am Carmen. I got interested in syndication so that I could
read more web sites without spending all day clicking around.
Working with my husband (who stays in the background but
helps me out a little bit :-) we've been having some fun.

We started by writing a very simple Windows client which could
read and display SlashDot's UltraMode text format. Then Dave
started talking about publishing his channel list, and we resolved
to be the first to support it. So we added in support for several
XML syndication formats (RSS, scriptingNews, and Ultramode XML),
and waited for Dave to announce his list. Just as soon as it
was ready we wrote the last bits of code and announced our
baby, "Carmen's Headline Viewer." Its been available for download
at http://www.vertexdev.com/HeadlineViewer; so far I have
gotten a lot of good feedback.

It has evolved over the last 2 months into a pretty nice generic
client. I can read the syndication lists from Dave's userland.com 
and from Ian's Internet Alchemy (http://alchemy.openjava.org/rss/).
In order to satisfy my news craving I have also added support 
for general text-based "backend" formats.

I would definitely prefer to see less formats, not more. 
Realistically, it is really not a big deal for me to add support 
formats; often just 20-45 minutes of fiddling around. But I would
prefer to work on features instead. I have added some support
for the moreover (www.moreover.com) format; however, their
URLs are not persistent so this is not yet a useful feature.

We should make it clear that there are two interesting formats
to talk about:

* The format of an individual syndicated web site. Basically a
  list of articles/titles/URLs (with interesting details thrown
  in for good measure).

* The format of a list of syndicated web sites. Right now there
  are two one-instance formats, Dave's and Ian's (what a great
  community -- we are on a first name basis). It sounds to me
  like James is coming up with something too. Ian's OCSF is a great
  start. 

So, what should we do? Here are my suggestions:

0. Let's stay friendly here. This is a small group and it is
   way too easy for innocent misunderstandings to turn into
   acrimonious debate. We don't need that.

1. Let's get as much wood behind one arrow as possible. 

2. Let's focus on practical stuff (counter-example: the XMLDev
   list, where some very abstract concerns end up scaring off
   many interested XML newbies).

3. Let's keep things simple. In most situations we would want
   to simplify things for the client program. Here, however,
   I believe that we want to have clean, simple, formats with
   many optional pieces of data. That way, new syndicators
   can start simple (with a small investment) and build from
   there.

4. Let's pay attention to scalability. Both to the very 
   low-end, simple situations and to high-end textually
   rich ones. Let's also worry around the list format so that
   if (as I fully expect) there are thousands of syndicated
   providers within a short time it will be possible to sort
   through the interesting ones.

5. Let's start actively soliciting sites to syndicate their
   content. Once Ian's FAQ is ready to go we can point
   interested sites to it and say "here is what you need
   to do to syndicate your content."

I am very interested in ways to sort and organize the lists
of providers. Right now between my built-in list, Ian's list,
and Dave's list I have about 250. This is way too many for
a normal user to sort through in order to decide what kinds
of news they want. We need standard (yet extensible)
categories. Either exclusive or non-exclusive.

I have looked at XMLNews and XMLNews-Meta but so far there
is no content for them (not that I know of anyway). It would
not be a big deal to support them. They do seem to be on
the verge of violating my rule #3.

A way to get stock quotes and weather would be cool. I expect
to add filtering and notification in a post-1.0 release.

I am also trying to think ahead to ways to advertise and
generate some revenue. Imagine if I had a small area on
my UI which could display banner ads. Some of these ads
would be my ads, but many would be drawn from the syndicated
content providers. This is kind of like the way US television
producers sell some ad time themselves and then leave open
slots for the local affiliates. I am getting way ahead of
reality here but it is worth thinking about.

That's enough for now!

Carmen

Try Headline Viewer at http://www.vertexdev.com/HeadlineViewer