Hi newsguy newsadmin! I am working on an 2-way RSS project and
would like to use NNTP as the inbetween delivery system.
However, setting up an NNTP server at home, while easy enough to
do, wouldn't suit the purpose (as I do not have a proper backup
system, UPS setup and brownouts are common in this part of
Florida in the summertime in any case). My hope is to be able to
utilize your mail/news gateway as a gobetween for this service,
as the NNTP protocol is able to handle lots of little things
quickly, and email is able to handle lots o little things
quickly. (by lots, I don't mean 100,000 but rather hundreds).
They are both mature systems that have stood the test of time.
RSS on the other hand, while an excellent, usable system, is
primarily one-way (unless you start dealing with RPC-XML hooks,
logins, etc) My vision is to take an RSS feed. Split it into its
elements and place it into a series of emails, the heading a
subject line and the body the heading repeated (with url) and
the snippet below. The mailing list portion could happen on
yahoogroups or another free mailing list system. [they are easy
enough to setup] This would then be fed, through your gateway,
to a single newsgroup for propagation. Then an existing
newsreader or perhaps a web-based NNTP reader could be used by
the clients to access the rss-fed newsgroup, not only to read
each item or to access it via clicking on the HTML portion
(which would keep the RSS element in a "snippet" form and allow
the user to find the original article), but would more
importantly allow whole disussions to take place, based upon
that feed element. The service I envision would be free and
simple, perhaps to the point creating various widgets allowing
webmasters to allow easy NNTP feeds for their site - two way
discussions that are not locked strictly into their website
itself but rather to the CONTENT. Should it become popular, then
by that point, I would be able to secure means for gathering a
dedicated NNTP server, allowing the elimination of the mailing
list and the need for NewsGuy's services. And if it is not a
raging success (or if I keep the scope very small), then I could
continue the setup. Would this be something you'd be interested
in helping an old-school BBSer/newsreader type experimenter do?
I'd appreciate it if you would! Let me know --- Kenneth Udut
