I've added RSS feeds to findU. If you don't know, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is a way to consolidate headlines and links into a newsfeed. I'd played a bit with this, but until I saw it integrated into the new version of Mac OS I didn't realize how cool this could be, especially as it relates to findU. Unlike most sites where there is one or a small set of news feeds, findU will support custom feeds.
Let me show you the way RSS feeds can be integrated into Mac OS. From what I understand about Windows, it does not have quite this level of integration, but I'm sure someday it will. I have created three feeds, by entering the following URLs into the web browser, and then added each to the browser's bookmark bar.
http://rss.findu.com/warn.cgi?call=k4hg&max=1500
http://rss.findu.com/msg.cgi?call=k4hg*
http://rss.findu.com/near.cgi?call=k4hg&distance=50
These are shown here at the upper left hand corner of the browser window:
Every 30 minutes, Apple's web browser checks these three URLs and looks for anything new. If there is a new message to my callsign, a new weather warning within 1500 miles (this number was chosen to be higher than useful for testing purposes), or a new APRS station within 50 miles, the browser signals this by placing the number of new items in parentheses following the link, it looks like this:
Clicking on the WARN link above brings up the list of the warnings, shown below. The list is sorted by date and the header shows the number of new items.
I'm open to any ideas on this, feel free to comment...
Steve K4HG