RE: [syndication] Alternate delivery mechanisms for RSS

["Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@hotmail.com>]

> From: Julian Bond [mailto:julian@netmarketseurope.com]
>
> There was some talk about delivering RSS via NNTP.
>
> I get one of the Moreover channels as a daily email. This has a nice
> side effect that I don't miss any headlines in this particular category,
> because I can easily keep a local archive of a week or so. On Friday
> mornings I go through the previous week and pick out the most
> interesting 15 or so, which I then re-publish[1]. This is almost
> impossible with a web interface as if you miss a day, the headlines are
> gone.

The current web interface in RU doesn't show them, that's correct.  This
doesn't mean you can't still get to them.  The archiving function can keep
them on your drive.  I'm inclinde to think there's some effort to make them
visible via the web interface.

That said, it seems to me there still needs to be a way to uniquely tag an
article.  In recalling usenet (NNTP) the hassle was a bookmark to a news
article was usually news server specific.  No two NNTP servers would have the
same ID info on a message.  Therefor I couldn't send a news:// url to others
unless there were on the same NNTP server.

I'm sure there's value to "local index number" for an article.  However, an ID
of the source, an ID and a link to it's "online repository" would be great.  I
suppose this could also be a way to have an article "phone home" when it's
used in an aggregated feed.  Perhaps a good way for authors of material to
"know" when their material is being used?  Messy, in that it would require the
aggregators to have a "send back" function but it would go a long way to
assuage the fears of people creating content only to have it "lifted" from
them.

-Bill