C[omp]ute

From: andrew cooke <andrew@...>

Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 13:03:37 -0400

RSS - as I currently use it - is a file that sits on my web server
with a list of posts.  People can check it whenever they feel like
and, if there is something new, check out my site.

So it's a pull technology.  Users need to go look at the file and see
if it has changed.

Pull technologies are good for somethings, but not so great for
others.  For example, Google doesn't want to be reading that file
every 10 minutes just so it can catch a new update twice a day.  So
companies like Google have an API (a web address that I can "call")
that I use to say "hey, I've updated my RSS file".    This is
(loosely) called a "ping" and is effectively a "push" to Google (or
Technorati, or whoever).

Now it turns out that RSS did support push all along, but no-one used
it!  I don't haven't looked at the details, but RSS Cloud is "push for
RSS" (as far as I can see).

And Wordpress just introduced it -
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wordpress_just_made_millions_of_blogs_real-time_wi.php

The technical details seem to be from Dave Winder (who was involved in
RSS) - http://rsscloud.org/

This is interesting because it makes RSS more like Twitter (and more
like chat, for which a good, efficient protocol called XMPP has
existed for years, but which people seem intent on reinventing -
http://xmpp.org/ ).

Andrew