The Beginnings of RSS

“Scripting News: “A picture named RSSBlueOnWhite.gifToday’s an important day in the history of Scripting News, and as it turns out, the history of the web. On this day in 1999, Netscape went public with its RSS reader, the first-ever. It was called My.Netscape.Com, and it was something like a page layout program in a browser. You arranged boxes containing news from a publication or a weblog. They got their service to work with Scripting News (I knew because they were sending me questions about my XMLization). Anyway, the news of their rollout is in the archive for the day, six years ago, and in a DaveNet piece](http://www.scripting.com/) that explained the news to the industry.”

Thanks a bunch for all your effort in this area Dave. I didn’t really understand the power of all this until just recently when I started integrating it into my own website. Now I don’t know how I’d live without it.

Not Your Father’s Galactica

The new [[Battlestar Galactica]] television series on SciFi sure is a pleasant surprise.

When I first heard that [[SciFi]] was planning to do a remake of the original (fun, if cheesy) show, I didn’t bother watching. I’d seen the recent [[SciFi]] entries and wasn’t impressed. Boy was I wrong.

A friend recently let me borrow his copy of the original 4 part miniseries. I watched that, and then caught up with all the series’ new episodes. This series is just plain awesome. It is the best science fiction on television since [[Babylon 5]] left the air.

They’re tackling real issues that would exist in the universe of the story (how about an entire episode dedicated to the search for water??), rather than just providing a fantasy set in space. This is has more of an edge than that.

Abbas ousts command after Israeli towns hit

[Boston Globe](http://www.boston.com/news/globe/pageone:) “GAZA CITY — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, confronting a brazen challenge to his authority, fired three top security commanders yesterday and issued a warning to Hamas after members of the militant Islamic group shelled Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip in violation of a truce announced two days before.”

Could this be a sign that there’s actually some small possibility that there could be peace over there??? Stay tuned.