I'm one of those technology enthusiasts who like to be on the edge, which means that if I'm not creating news, I at least like to read a lot to keep up with the rapidly changing world of technology. A part of my morning (and sometimes even my night) is spent taking a good look at some of the popular technology Web sites. I think I look through at least 20 such sites each day, in most cases browsing through the headlines and in some cases diving deep into the articles.

In a recent search I came across an article by Dare Obasanjo on MSDN, titled "RSS Bandit." In his article, Dare talks about having utilized the various XML capabilities available in the .NET Framework to develop a desktop-based news reader that retrieves news from different Web sites and puts it together in a nice desktop application, triggering the user for new content. I downloaded the application and felt that it would meet most of my needs. I did use it for a while, but then I came to the conclusion that as a die-hard Web user, I would rather have similar functionality in a Web application. This would help me keep the application on one central "server" (or even my own desktop, given the fact that I am actually running Windows 2003 Server) and run it within a familiar interface, a desktop browser. Running it on the server would also enable it to be used from devices other than my PC. I would just need to ensure that the portal framework I'm using and my RSS portlet are mobile.

If you haven't come across RSS yet, RSS is "Really Simple Syndication." Simply put, RSS provides a simple way for Web sites to provide syndicated content to downstream applications. Of course, RSS is based on XML and it's not really a new development. In fact, it dates all the way back to 1999, when RSS was introduced by Netscape to add channels to their my.netscape.com portal. Since then RSS has become almost the de facto standard, particularly for news sites to provide headlines. After using RSS Bandit and my own portal application, I no longer enjoy news sites that don't provide RSS-based headlines.

RSS can be processed in multiple ways. I prefer to use XSLT to transform RSS content into HTML within a portal environment. I'm a huge proponent of Web-based and portal frameworks. So in one single aggregated page, I can get related content - news headlines, contact information, and even weather and stock quotes.

A good thing about open standards is that they can be used in scenarios for which they weren't specified. A nice RSS example is illustrated by Greg Reinacker, who has created a simple ASP.NET application to publish system Event logs as RSS. By the way, Greg has also authored another neat application based on RSS, called NewsGator, that provides RSS-based content within Microsoft Outlook. Also, most weblogs are RSS-enabled as well. I'm sure you can think of other content to RSS-enable. So, what are you waiting for? Use an RSS-based aggregator and be prepared for the extra loads of knowledge that you will get by aggregating top news sites, technology sites, and even people's weblogs.

In last month's editorial, I gave a brief summary of Microsoft's Tech*Ed conference, from an XML perspective. Right after Microsoft's Tech*Ed was Sun's JavaOne, held in San Francisco, California, June 10-13. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to Java's big event, but luckily Chris Peltz attended and provides a report on JavaOne in this issue of XML-J. If you weren't able to make it to the conference, there's more good news. Most of the sessions are now available online at Sun's JavaOne site (http://java.sun.com/javaone). One standard, two competing platforms. That, in a nutshell, is the relationship between XML, Microsoft .NET, and J2EE.

Speaking of conferences, our own Web Services Edge West will be held September 30 - October 2, 2003, in Santa Clara, California. Preparations are in full swing - check out www.sys-con.com/webservicesedge2003west for further details.