Robot Radio takes RSS feeds and puts them on the radio. Yes, that's right, it converts text in RSS to audio and puts it up on satellite radio. Not sure how useful that is, but I sure wouldn't mind doing that next time I'm driving from California to Seattle. I wonder what voice they'd use for Dave Winer. Thanks to G. Humphrey, founder of MarketFront for sending that along.

9:19:26 AM    

Just to be fair, I found one RSS News Aggregator done in Java: clevercactus (although it isn't downloadable now -- the relaunch is coming later this month). The guy who wrote it, Diego, emailed me about it. I'll check it out when it gets relaunched, although because I live life in Outlook I'll probably stick with NewsGator. It'd be real interesting to have the community do an RSS News Aggregator comparison.

9:17:51 AM    

Dear Bay Area friends: I am coming to visit you! [Scripting News]

No - this isn't a Dave Winer lovefest - but I DID catch something in the subtext which said:

9:14:24 AM    

It's official.  As of today - all Tribe Tribes will feature RSS output of their message boards.

Sure other message boards output RSS, but no other message boards in social networks.  It's putting all this technology into an integrated context that matters. 

Old school means separate data silos.  New school means integration, aggregation and appropriate levels of customization.  That's what digital lifestyle aggregators are all about.

Meanwhile - this is not the ONLY open standard Tribe will be supporting.  Watch for FOAF and Jabber (XMPP) support - soon enough. In the mean time - congrats to Paul, Bryan and the rest of the Tribe team.  Now we gotta get all those Tribesters to start using RSS aggregators!

9:13:05 AM    

Here's an example that turns Anil Dash's new Atom feed into an RSS 2.0 file. [Workbench]

9:07:54 AM    

Borland has a bunch of RSS feeds for developers.

9:05:00 AM    

Simon Phipps told me about another few RSS channels (a bunch of Sun ones are here). I think I'm reading more than 1350 feeds now.

9:04:29 AM    

Every day it seems another monster application of RSS comes on line. Most of it is RSS 2.0, occasionally an earlier version, 0.91, 0.92 or 1.0. But usually it's 2.0.

My philosophy is that the time to make an offer is when you're strongest, because that's when it's most likely to work. It's also the time that tech people seem least likely to make the offer. For example, Apple finally became interested in working with developers, seriously, in its darkest moments in 1996. Same with Netscape in 1999, and then the Dean campaign in early 2004. It seems to be human nature to wait until it's too late, when the battle is lost, as a desperate last measure. But working together is a great way to cement victory.

Now that RSS is ascending so powerfully, I want to make an offer on its behalf. It would be easy to say that other formats don't matter, but even if I believe that, the community is better off if we have one format we're all promoting; as opposed to having continued arguments about whether "issued" is better than "pubDate". The truth is that neither is better or worse. If it works it's good.

So from this strength, I've outlined a plan to merge RSS and Atom, much the same way we merged UserLand's format with Netscape's format in 1999. By making this offer to the Atom people I'm giving them a chance to get out of conflict with RSS. I think it's something users can support. I hope they get together and make a serious counter. Why shouldn't they?

It's pretty clear RSS is over the top, no matter what the Atom people do. Google is powerful, but they're not so powerful that they can compete with the ever increasing mountain of support for RSS. And why should they pick a fight with RSS? It's a format. It's not stealing any revenue from them. None of their jobs depend on wiping out RSS. It makes no sense to fight with it. If RSS were weak, they might be able to capture it, lock up the new format with patents, but that just isn't going to happen. RSS is too strong.

So here's the chance to do something good for the Internet, something not evil. Let's go Google, let's go SixApart, it's time to bury the hatchet and move on. Joi Ito, you're famous for being an advocate of peace. RSS is here to stay and so are Google and Movable Type. Let's all acknowledge that and stop this fight now.

8:54:41 AM