An idea for RSS distribution - push it through Jabber!

["Jeff Barr" <jeff@vertexdev.com>]

I have been thinking about the problem of RSS clients overloading
news sites such as newsisfree.com.

Then I read all about Dave Winer's work with XML-RPC and Jabber:

	
http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2001/08/22#tunnelingXmlrpcW
ithJabber

And then I read the following message:

	http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$5270?mode=day

And when I woke up this morning I realized that we may have an 
interesting solution. To wit:

	What if we use Jabber as our distribution vehicle?

It is based on XML, it is widely available, and the processing 
overhead seems to be pretty low.

Basically we would create a single "Newsfeeds" conference.

Providers of syndicated material (or third-party re-posters) would
then post new messages into the conference. Each message would be a
complete RSS file. We could create multiple conferences to reduce
the load on the client, but this is a decision we can make later.

Clients would subscribe to the conference, and would be notified
when new news is available.

I have not thought this through all the way, but I think it could
actually work. One interesting aspect of this is that it would
force the use of valid XML (you can stop cheering now, Morbus :-).
It would obviate the need for clients to poll for updates. And it
would give us something akin to a real-time news feed, which would
be very, very cool.

We do gain a new single point of failure. If it turns out that
the servers at jabber.com are not reliable enough, we could consider
running our own server(s).

How does this sound? Is it crazy enough to work? Again I will 
repeat my usual offer -- if someone wants to do the server side
stuff I will add experimental support for this to Headline Viewer.
Do we have a news provider ready to step forward and start posting
RSS to Jabber?

Ideas, feedback, etc?

Jeff;