Tuesday 7 September 2004

Newsfeeds and The Semantic Web

I find that I'm eagerly anticipating the arrival of a full "semantic web", where we place not web pages but connected facts online. We start to treat the web like a wiki encyclopedia and I can get my news, weather, comics and interesting tidbits in one simple interface. I know I already have "one simple interface" in my web browser, but I do still have to deal with the individualised look and feel of web pages when all I want is the content.

Some of this functionality already exists in the form of RSS feeds for frequently-updated sites, though I've found them to be mostly inconsistent, flaky and poorly-supported. The few RSS readers I've tried have been unable to handle most of the feeds I've thrown at them. Besides that, only some sites provide an RSS feed at all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can be very demanding when it comes to my machines.
PPS - "You may say I'm a dreamer..."

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