Adam Curry makes some interesting points:
We’ve collectively created transmitters and tools for content creators but forgot to flood the market with receivers.
RSS provides a ‘static free’ format for content and is constantly being improved to do things like carry attachments (just like email) along with written words. No formatting, no fancy script thingies or blink tags, just plain content.
RSS is the content carrier wave of the future. And everyone with a weblog can or is already creating a compatible broadcast channel.
There’s a hidden gem in rss. Each entry can be accompanied by a url that points to an ‘enclosure’. The idea is that an enclosure is a large media object, like an mpeg or DiVX file.
When an aggregator scans an rss signal with enclosures, it can decide to download the file in the background to your desktop or any spot on your harddrive.
A good receiver will wait for you, and only notify you when the file has been completely downloaded. It will give you a link to the local location on your hard drive. Click, no wait.
Adam has a request for an application:
I made this one up: Request For Application.
The application is described as an internet media receiver.
Technically speaking (in my own terminology) the application is a news aggregator that supports downloads
It should be cross platform (otherwise I can’t test it on my mac 🙂 and run in the background. It needs to be light weight.
The application uses a browser as interface, so it has a built in web server. The interface minimally allows for a One Page Aggregator and subscription management that includes specifying a download folder for each feed’s enclosures.
No windows, buttons, panes, prefs or options. I want my receiver to do nothing more than “Collect & Serve”.
I think we should write to Adam! The Info Aggregator we have can be the base for building what Adam wants.
RSS+T
