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[Robert E.Seastrom]

Alex Fraser <beatnic at comcast.net> writes:

> I saw  the term RSS aggregator at the NOAA site.  Could you elaborate
> on the technology?

Might be worthy of a presentation and demo at the library if there's
sufficient interest.

The 100k ft overview is that RSS is an XML-based way of exporting news
headlines (or logfile snippets or events or whatever you like) from a
web site or process, along with possibly a snippet of the story, the
whole story itself, possibly small pictures or links.  Blogs (stuff
like Livejournal) and news outlets provide RSS feeds (an XML file that
is updated periodically that can be snagged off a web server via
HTTP).

An RSS aggregator is a piece of software that you run on your desktop
machine that goes off and grabs RSS feeds from a multitude of sources,
and presents them in an easily browseable format, keeping track of
what you've already read.

Recommended RSS aggregators for Windows: SharpReader (freeware),
FeedDemon (cheapieware).

Recommended RSS aggregator for Mac:  NetNewsWire.

Joe-bob says check it out.

                                        ---rob