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The NewsMonster project on Freshmeat lists burtonator as the lead developer.

Gee, I love Google :)

"Looks like the wired article has copy-pasted and not done any real work."

Sounds like most Slashdot posters.

Anyway this, and this do me nicely.

Newsmonster demonstrates a couple things. Not only Mozilla technologies (XPI==web start), but that bugaboo that's everyone's whipping boy, JAVA. Sometimes the best solutions aren't MONO solutions, but everything working together. Rich clients can be had, but someone has to code them first, with what we have.

"We have great success with Java on the desktop. The only snag is that we have to tell our customers to download the Java VM, but once they've done it, everything's good."

Funny thing about this argument is that it's not seen as a problem when discussing Adobe Acrobat, and Flash, but it becomes an issue when it comes to Java, and whatever else OSS can come up with. So either people WILL download plugins, or they will not.

The people at OpenPrivacy have been working on tackling the problem of anonymous news syndication for years. The result of this effort is Reptile, which has both an anonymous RSS syndication system as well as a web-of-trust reputation framework. NewsMonster is a similar application written by some of the same people that has a reputation system but lacks support for anonymous publication.

Also, there's JTCFrost, a freenet client that supports NNTP-style news publication.

Here are my recommendations for RSS/news readers for Windows (and other platforms):

If you use the Mozilla browser, NewsMonster is a great RSS add-on. It is cross-platform, and the basic version is free and open source. (There is a Pro version with a bunch more features for a fee.) It installs as a second sidebar in the Mozilla browser, and you can read feeds like you read email in most email clients. It also installs with about twenty popular feeds to get you started. It has a few bugs, but it is my favorite one overall.

Another one is AmphetaDesk. It is also free, open source, and cross-platform. It displays all your feeds in a web page in your browser. It runs in the Windows taskbar, checking ever so often for updates. It's not as powerful as other RSS readers--it's not easy to tell which feeds and articles are new/updated, for instance--but it is rock-solid with no bugs that I've ever found.

Mozilla could be a contender, but it's split into a million project as a mozilla user, i know of the current browser (1.6?), Firefox (lets remember this IS a beta we're talking about), Thunderbird - a mail client, and some MAC OSX only broswer that I'm too lazy to go get the name of. My point is, that's 4 projects, please name the other 999,996 please cause I'd like to explore their other products.

And really FF and TB are branches of the main Mozilla suite. There was the Sunbird project, which was developing a stand-alone version of the Mozilla Calendar, but I think it's dead; and there was talk of creating Moonbird, an HTML editor. The other projects listed on Mozilla's download page are developer tools, and, strangely, a Java email client.

Being an open-source project, there are naturally some unofficial projects based upon Gecko, like Aggreg8 and Newsmonster, but they aren't taking resources away from the Mozilla Foundation.

My real goal right now is to purchase a C760...

IMO this is the Porsche of Linux PDAs.

The form factor of this is very unique in the PDA space.

My NewsMonster RSS aggregator already runs on my SL-5500 and the enhanced res and size of the C760 should really make for a great newspaper/memex style device.

NewsMonster supports the ability to export an article for PDA readability and strips out all non-format compliant content (no tables, images, etc.) All you're left with is just the raw article.

This would be my dream device... add a Sprint CF card with 128k wireless data and I will be in heaven!

Not that I don't like this new Zaurus... it's just too small for me.

Kevin

I'm a PC user, but one thing I've never been able to figure out about most PC users is this: WHY do so many people run all their apps full-screen?

I only use one application at a time. I may have several applications open but at any given time I'm only using one of them. If I'm in XEmacs then I'm not using Mozilla. Therefore I don't want any part of Mozilla or any other application on my screen. I want as much of my screen as possible devoted to the application at hand. Most programs will let me take advantage of that real estate. In XEmacs I can split the window every which way. With Mozilla I can have my bookmarks be available to the left of my browser pane. I also have NewsMonster open between my bookmarks and my browsing pane. All of this takes room on the screen. Maximizing ensures that I'm using as much of it as reasonably possible.

Another reason is that I prefer to find things in the same place every time. If windows are maximized then the buttons, widgets, text fields, etc are all in the same place every time I use an application. With a bunch of unmaximized windows I have to expend more energy to think about where something is that I want to click on.

The last reason is that I feel that the window manager should manage my windows. The concept of "screens" on the Amiga was the ideal environment for me. MS Windows' maximize function gives me the closest thing to that which I can find. The Mac doesn't even come close to working the way I want.

It totally defeats the purpose of a windowed OS.

So anyway, that's why I do it. I'm most comfortable and productive when I work with everything maximized.

I use Newsmonster, which integrates into Mozilla.

Blogdex and Daypop already are close to this, by keeping track of what the current popular links are. Every time a weblog links to something, it's a vote for that URL. That's the closest to democratization of the media if I've seen yet.

The only thing that needs to happen to match your view is personalization through a web of trust. Perhaps a person's FOAF defines who's opinions they value, and their RSS Aggregregators will rate stories accordingly. I think NewsMonster is working on something like this, but I don't know if it's implemented yet.

I have NewsMonster under a similar license.

The only difference is time. We don't become Open Source based on $$$ we go
OSS based on time. I believe this yields less animosity within the community.

Right now it is three years. I am going to send Tony an email now telling him
that NewsMonster will be under an O-STEP license.

Kevin