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Business
Info Aggregator: an e-mail based news aggregation tool
THIS WEEK'S NetSpeak explores the features of an e-mail based news aggregation service that can be used to receive news feeds with an email client.
In the past this column featured different kinds of news aggregators that collect, organise and display RSS (Rich Site Summary) files on a single window with user friendly navigation tools, where you can read the latest info available on your favourite sites without visiting those sites. (As mentioned in last week's column, an RSS file is an XML-coded file published regularly by web sites with condensed information on the latest content available on them).
A desktop news aggregator helps download headline contents from various sites to your desktop so that you can read them comfortably off-line. But you need to download and install a program for this. Of course, as there are many programs available for free, this is not a big deal. But, if you do not want to tax your machine with one more program and still want to keep up-to-date on site contents with the help of RSS feeds, here is a solution that lets you push the news feeds of your choice into an e-mail box.
Info Aggregator
Info Aggregator is an `RSS-IMAP service' that enables you to `receive and read RSS feeds' with a mail client like Eudora or Outlook. After signing up with the service, it will provide you an IMAP e-mail ID (IMAP — Internet Message Access Protocol — is one of the methods used to retrieve mails from a mail server) of the form your — name@rss.blogstreet.com.
Once an account is registered with the service, log-in to it and subscribe to your favourite RSS feeds using the `Add Subscription' option. Apart from subscribing to the RSS feeds by directly entering the URL of an RSS feed the service also provides several other means to help you populate the subscription list. For example, it provides a link to `Top 100 Blogs' which can be used to view and subscribe to the RSS feeds of any of the popular blogs contained in the list.
Once the required steps to subscribe to the relevant feeds are over, you can start receiving the RSS feeds through your mail client. Of course, to pick the RSS feeds from the mailbox given to you by the Info Aggregator service, you need to configure the mail client using the details explained in the e-mail received from the service during the registration process. For more details, access the link: http://rss.blogstreet.com/
Services with Creative Commons licence
It is common knowledge that inventions/discoveries/insights/creations take place with the help of past knowledge. There is however a feeling that some of the provisions of the copyright laws prevent people from making use of past knowledge to create new knowledge. As mentioned in an earlier column, the service `Creative Commons', enables people to publish their creative works with less restrictive copyright conditions. A notable feature of products published under this licence is that it grants permission to make derivative works without much restriction. Check out this link that explains the licensing process: http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/how1
In fact you can spot many useful products/services on the Net that are published under `Creative Commons' licence. WikiTravel, a project that aims to create an on-line travel-guide with the help of travellers across the world, is an interesting example. This site with Wiki pages (a Wiki page is a web page that can be edited by anyone on the web) contains a wealth of travel related information that currently covers, as per its site, `391 destinations'. If a traveller finds something new he or she can edit the relevant page and add their new experiences/findings. The site's content is available free under the creative commons licence.
Common Content catalogue
Wiki travel is just one of the many resourceful services on the Net available under the creative commons licence. The best way to locate such services is to use the search service, `Common Content' (http://www.commoncontent.org/) that provides `a catalogue of works licensed in the Creative Commons'. The service provides information on various products that are `available for anyone for copying and creative re-use'. The service also allows an author who has some products with creative commons licence add this information to the common content catalogue.
Using the service this author could locate such sites as Socratic Electronics (http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/books/socratic/), a site that contains freely downloadable `questions and answers intended to be used as a tool for teaching basic electronics' and TuitionFree (http://www.tuitionfree.com/), a site that provides innumerable links to free resources/articles/books available on-line.
Atnotes
Short notes that can be pasted on to your desktop can serve as reminders of things to do and the like.
The free `Post-It' software, ATnotes (http://atnotes.free.fr/index.html) is a tool that can be used to create/paste notes anywhere on the desktop.
After installation you will find ATnotes icon on the task bar. To create a note right-click on it and access the `New Note' option. Apart from displaying the notes on your desktop, the program also allows you to do such things as sending the note to other computers in the network and attaching an alarm to the note.
J. Murali
Email the author at: murali27@saytam.net.in
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