Re: [syndication] XML Dispatching, 5335, and the Coffee Mug

[Mark Nottingham <mnot@mnot.net>]

This is a good step, but it doesn't go far enough.

I'm all for getting away from aggregator-specific icons, tags, whatever; 
it doesn't scale, and it locks people into particular products. It also 
clutters up your page like nobody's business.

However, doing it with a centralized script isn't the answer; it forces 
everyone to rely on a single point of failure - the script and its 
host - which might be taken down by an internet problem, financial 
concerns, etc., and is subject to privacy issues, ownership contention, 
etc. It just moves the problem one step away - instead of having 
different buttons for different aggregators, we'll have different 
buttons for aggregators-of-aggregators.

What's needed is a decentralized approach. The Web way to do it would be 
to dispatch a content-type on the client to a local program; that 
program might be an on-machine aggregator, or it may redirect to an 
online aggregator. This is where I was going previously [1][2]. I'm 
still interested in this if anyone wants to help.


1. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndication/message/1991
2. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndication/message/2436


On Sunday, April 7, 2002, at 10:17  PM, justin/klubnik wrote:

> As pointed out here [1] the current implementation of the coffee mug 
> only allows for the one-click integration of a feed if the user is 
> running a copy of Radio Userland. This poses a functionality problem 
> for people who do not run Radio Userland, and also discourages 
> non-Radio readers from subscribing to Radio users sites.
>  
> Springboarding off of [1] I've thrown together a script that (if 
> pointed to with a URL of a feed) will allow the user to select which 
> service or application they wish to use to subscribe to the feed. 
> (currently includes four services). If the coffee mug was reworked to 
> point to a URL running this script (or one with similar functionality) 
> the problem would be solved. The main advantage to this system is that 
> the user does not have to install a work-around locally.
>  
> I recommend that the location of this script be at syndic8.com, a 
> platform/application neutral party. That is, provided Jeff feels it is 
> something syndic8 is interested in doing. (bandwidth issues, etc).
>  
> This script is currently at: http://fyuze.com/exp/xmldispatch.php and 
> should be called with a url argument.
>  
> Example: 
> http://fyuze.com/exp/xmldispatch.php?url=http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf
>  
> I do not have Radio installed on my system, so I can't verify that it 
> works, however, in principle, it should. (fingers crossed)
>  
> You can examine the (simple) script at: 
> http://fyuze.com/exp/xmldispatch.src
>  
>
> Thoughts, suggestions?
>  
> [1] http://www.pipetree.com:8080/
>
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--
Mark Nottingham
http://www.mnot.net/