[aprssig] findU and RSS

[Brad McConahay]

Steve Dimse wrote:
> On May 22, 2005, at 9:09 PM, Brad McConahay wrote:
>
> > Hmm... I think Linux and Windows RSS users might be wondering
> > what took findU so long to find RSS! ;)
>
> I'd looked at RSS before, but never really got what made it
> useful until I saw it tightly integrated with the browser. In my
> defense, I'll add that I don't recall anyone ever asking for it.
> Anyway, you are the XML guy, you have the ability to do this, so
> why didn't YOU do it? ;-)

I wish I had now - hindsight is 20/20 :-)  But honestly, that was really
just intended as a comeback to what sounded like a "Mac is superior to
Windows" jab (the Longhorn bit), which I usually feel the need to respond
to.  Iow, I don't honestly think you missed the boat on anything, that was
just a sparring kinda comment.

It did occur to me many times, but I don't really have a good enough vision
of what's truly useful.  It felt like just trying to marry the two things
for no other reason than the sake of doing it.  Not that that's a bad thing,
but I just never came up with any ideas that seemed like a good enough fit
with RSS to spend time on it.  While I have the tools and know-how to build
stuff like that quickly, I don't usually know the best way to fit it
together to make something really useful, at least not without specific
suggestions.

My main personal use of APRS is pretty much limited to a weather station (as
opposed to objects in motion), so that gives me a somewhat limited view on
what might otherwise seem obvious to others.  The only RSS/APRS thing that
really popped out to me as being really interesting was weather bulletins,
and I don't have access to that data with the aprsworld database.  So I left
it at that.

Brad N8QQ