It is yet incomplete and not all XML-related
sources are syndicated ( I greatly appreciate
any URLs to XML-news websites ), but it should
give the idea.
I believe that for some cases it is
*very* convenient to get such a news feed,
rather than browse each website
or use Google. The problem with RSS / RDF
is that none of the RSS / RDF sources
that I've seen provides the information
other than the title and url. That's is just
'not enough'.
However, there is one fundamental
legal problem with current HGRAB
design.
The first impression is : "it is suspicious,
because it is not you who is creating the
content". ( that's why HGRAB strips
the original markup, so that the user is
enforced to go to the original news source ).
However, the more I think about this, the
more interesting it gets.
So, what HGRAB actually does? It polls
the HTML pages ( once in a while,
no harm done to the load of original
website ). Then it places some part of the
content into HGRAB database (for future
searching). Then it provides the end-user
with some 'part' of the original news item
and with the URL to the original news source.
Google does *exactly* this (and also Google
provides a cached copy of the original content)
That means:
Either both HGRAB and Google should be sued,
because they both sell the content
*which does not belong to them*, or both
HGRAB and Google should be considered
'just a service'.
Add the (similar) legal problems that Napster
( and many other P2P networks ) ...
"What can you do to the content created not by you"
is *really* a tricky question.
Is Google illegal ? I'm not a lawyer - I don't know.
My conclusion is that the Internet is a legal mess
and next years there would be more work for
lawyers, than for developers.
Whatever. I'm not a lawyer, so I would continue to
improve the syndicator (anyway, my goal still is
'XML-words' knowledge base, the HGRAB
was a side-effect ) so :
1. Do you know about some nice XML-news
( or 'general IT' ) websites other than:
Could you please drop me the URL?
2. If HGRAB looks interesting to you (in any way) -
you're welcome to write me. I'm thinking to make
it into standalone product, but ... Thinking ...
Even in alpha, it already appears to work and
adding a new 'news Source' is usually a matter
of 15 minutes (that was the goal)
Rgds.Paul.
PS.
HGRAB is written in XSLT, XML Chunks,
SQL, Perl. When writing it, I found that
XSLT is *not* actually a good tool for
*processing* of mixed content ( XSLT is
good for *rendering* mixed content - which
is different task. XPath axes are kinda
'orthogonal' to 'good-old regular expressions'
machinery and good-old regular expressions
work 'better'. I can elaborate, if somebody
is interested )
