dive into mark (another weblog

dive into mark (another weblog I read) published a rant about tools that supposedly assist users finding syndicated content.

The whole idea is basically this: The web, and computers in general, are supposed to make life easier for us by automating routine & mundane tasks. If there are a number of websites you read regularly, wouldn’t it be nice if you had a tool that could automatically gather their content and bring it to you in one place? There is a technology called the Resource Description Framework (RDF) that supports this and there are tools like AmphetaDesk and FeedReader that know how to use RDF.

The big trouble is that 9 times out of 10 you have to know that a site supports RDF and you have to know where to find the RDF files. Mark’s point is that a site should tell you where to “autodiscover” its RDF files so that tools like AmphetaDesk and FeedReader can sleuth them out for you.