dannyman.toldme.com

blog-to-nntp

So, I’m not alone in this crazy fantasy . . .

I have been thinking that I’d like a web-based aggregator that doesn’t suck. Bloglines is all about the frames, Rojo is all about not actually working right, and Yahoo! and Google “ig” are just little sticky-notes-in-a-portal . . .

And I was thinking about back-end storage of data. Multi-master replication? BAH! And then I said, well, there’s always NNTP. NNTP is a system of multi-master replication for the ancestors of blog posts . . .

So, you’d need:
1) An NNTP server.
2) An RSS-to-NNTP gateway, to mirror blogs into NNTP.
3) Then, you could use a newsreader as an aggregator.
4) And build a web-based interface to the NNTP backend, if you weren’t happy with newsreaders.

Note: I want a web-based aggregator because I don’t only ever just use one computer, right?

Anyway, Dave was suggesting that he has a similar fantasy, where it is one blog equals one newsgroup, and each blog post is a post, but then blog comments are also posted, with reference to the original blog post. You’d see a thread in your newsreader, probably a flat one, given the limitations of contemporary meta-data, but could possibly follow-up via NNTP and the mirror could “post” your comment back via trackback or pingback or what-have-you.

Anyway, it is pretty insane, but the sort of neat thing about it is blogs are a reinvention of USENET, so it is only just desserts that they should be folded back into the NNTP!

Still, I have a few other personal projects I have been neglecting, so . . .