Atom And Eve

Everywhere I go, I read about Atom 0.3 and how it’s going to replace RSS. I was confused as to what Atom truly is, and what its purpose is, but I think I got the gist of it. From what I understand, the creator of RSS decided that there’s nothing left to be added after the 2.0 specifications, but a lot of people strongly disagreed. These people felt that there was a lot to be done with syndication, to make it easier, more robust, and ready for the future. A group of people decided to get together and created Atom to replace RSS. A lot of people are excited about it, even though it’s still in an early form, but apparently it’s the real deal.

I went ahead and added an Atom template to Good Blimey, which can be found at http://www.goodblimey.com/atom.xml. After reading all this, are you still confused about what exactly syndication is? Look at it this way, it lets you browse the web in a more streamlined manner, without a browser, but with a software called a news aggregator. If you want even more details on syndication, read up on this page. So what news aggregator supports Atom? Right now, not many, but supposedly Bottom Feeder works (Windows) and possibly clevercactus, and if you use GNOME on Linux, you can check out Straw with this patch to enable support.

For even further information on Atom, check the official spec page, this Wiki on Atom, and this excellent article if all else fails.