Nonsequittal Rumblings

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/japan_bobby_fischer
What is this world coming to? We can be accused of violating immigration and international relations laws for the sake of arts and fair competition? I know that laws are there for anyone and everyone. But at the same time, I thought there’s certain amount of public relations that the enforcers need to keep in mind. So, what good does detention of a chess master bring to U.S. and Japan? I really can’t tell. I personally feel somewhat repelled. Hrm.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200407/s1152402.htm
This is one news I need to hide from my daughter. The kins of Kanga and Roo being culled! She will start worrying about when kins of Pooh will be culled.

The woe continues.

I quickly found out that nntp//rss does not support any feeds thta require HTTP authentication. Well, it doesn’t yet, as of version 0.3. The support is planned for 0.4, and I can see the code in the CVS. But it’s been over a year since the release of 0.3, and 3 months since the last visible update on 0.4 branch.

So, I set out for another alternative once again.

BottomFeeder

I couldn’t figure out how to configure proxy setting, which I need when I’m at work.

Awasu

It’s somewhat interesting looking, cool name, and even has an ability to swap the integrated browser for viewing pages within the program, although it’s not officially supported. The problem is, HTTP user authentication, etc are only enabled in professional version and up only. I wan a freeware, preferably an open source product.

Syndirella

This one was just still too poor in feature and UI etc.

NewsMonster

Finally something that’s integrated to Mozilla. The problem is, when I installed it on Firefox, it was ugly. This one is NOT for Firefox. It’s only for Mozilla and Netscape 7! Firefox users, stay away from this product!

I give up. I just can’t find the solution I can get happy with. For now, I’m going to stick with nntp//rss + Thunderbird. I got very acustomed to having RSSReader running all the time, but this needs to change now. Besides, now I have 2 programs in one – both email and rss in T-bird!

I have experimented with several aggregators since yesterday’s post. So, what did I find out? I found out that I don’t like all of my candidates.

Opera

pro: displays HTML news contents, does not require .NET or JAVA

con: clunky UI, in-line image not supported

FeedReader

pro: displays full HTML news contents, does not require .NET or JAVA, fast

con: Relies on MSIE engine

RSSOwl

pro: Runs on Java technology, good UI

con: no support for HTML contents, default HTML viewer is MSIE for windows version

comment: The default browser for unix/linux version is Mozilla. I don’t understand why they couldn’t do the same with windows version

So, I searched for alternatives.

I thought about using XSL to display contents as HTML. But using this method lacks the support for old/new item flag, which I really like on all of the above mentioned programs.

Then I thought about writing my own RSS parser in PHP. It wouldn’t be too hard. It’s not the fastest solution, but handling XML in PHP was pretty easy when I’ve tried it out in the past. (It was just recently that I found the power of building OOP-based library for handling XML in PHP, without use of DOMXML. Maybe I’ll mention that some other day.)

I tried out MyYahoo‘s RSS aggregation service, since I already use MyYahoo. The result wasn’t too pleasing.

Besides, surfing through all those RSS news using those web interface would be a bit clunky. I wouldn’t like it too well anyway.

I tried out nntp//rss. It’s RSS to NNTP (usenet protocol) gateway, written in Java. The idea is close to those of YahooPOPS and HotPOP – the POP3 simulators for Yahoo Mail and HotMail. Except it can be configured to subscribe multiple feeds (they are not targeted for 1 news source, thank goodness!), and uses NNTP to communicate with the client, not POP3. I really like how it works. Now I can use Mozilla Thunderbird to view the RSS news.

And here’s one more thing: while I was searching for all these program,s I also stumbled upon quickSub – a small javascript library that makes subscription to the news feed easier for many RSS programs, including RSS Bandit, SharpReader, and, of course, nntp//rss. Now, it’s time to go add this library to Froth-Bite’s release page.

…or aggregator, you might say.
http://www.winplanet.com/article/2432-.htm
As most of us know, MSIE is loaded with security holes. It’s not all too buggy, but it’s insecure. All the security experts nowadays warn against the use of IE. Well, IE isn’t a bad thing if you keep up with all the security patches, firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc. But still, we’re still finding more security holes everyday. That scares me. So, I’ve been sticking with Mozilla based browsers – namely, Phoenix, Firebird, and now Firefox. (Or Firepanda, if you use Fireanything plug-in.)

That’s fine and dandy for the most part. But recently, I was thinking, it’s not too wise of idea to be using applications like RssReader, which is based on .NET framework (not too bad) and MSIE (bad bad bad).

Well, fine. So I’ll make a switch. There are plenty of non-.NET/MSIE based aggregators around. Yes, sure. But most of them are JAVA based. I don’t hate JAVA, especially as a user of Azureus. But, I was hoping to get Mozilla based RSS Reader. And so far, I’ve only found side-bar RSS reader plug-in, which isn’t powerful enough in my opinion.

Anyway, for now, my choices are RSS-Owl and Opera’s built-in RSS system. If anyone out there know of any good reader that you really recommend (especially if it’s something like Thunderbird add-on), then let me know. I’d be eager to try it out.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl…/japan_iraqi_boy

When the news these days are filled with crimes and people’s idiocity, it’s a good change to see a good news make it to the headline news once in a while. And I like what I read! (The article was the top headline news for “World News from AP Asia” section on MyYahoo for me this morning.)

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/local/9076360.htm

There are more people who are bored than I can imagine. I generally don’t like bitching, but sometimes, I can’t help. It’s clear that some people just can’t get the grasp of the bigger picture. And the cries from the officials speaking in this articles are not being heard by enough people. Why… why… why…