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Friday, February 11, 2005

Read Differently

I'm trying out CNET's Newsburst.

It looks like it's going to be an interesting addition to the online aggregator space.

On first glance I like their idea of a News Stream. All your feed results can get put into one long stream. Frassle can do this but I haven't tried it yet, and I think bloglines can do it too.

Dave Winer wrote about it.

I did come across a user interface issue that I emailed them about.
When adding your own source the text prompts:

"Add your own source
If you know the URL for the source file, enter it here:"

I did that, but what you really wanted was an RSS feed URL. So I got an error from you asking for an XML source.

I know what I'm doing and was confused. Think about people who don't know what RSS or XML means...

So the prompt might be better labeled as:
"Add your own source
If you know the RSS (XML) URL for the source file, enter it here:"

The problem is that RSS is written in XML and the buttons on people's pages can say either of those or something else all together.