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Habari Xenu - A Cool XUL News Aggregator |
What is Habari Xenu?
Habari Xenu is a News Aggregator that is built on top of the powerful
Mozilla web platform.
What is a News Aggregator?
A News Aggregator is a program that periodically downloads the latest news
from your chosen news sources and displays them in one convenient place. It
enables you to glance at the latest headlines and gives you the ability to
read the full story behind headlines that interest you. In conjunction with
Mozilla's tabbed browsing feature, a program like Habari Xenu helps you
quickly catch up with all the latest news from your favorite news sources.
How do I begin using it?
Habari Xenu uses a folder your in bookmarks to store and manage its news
sources. To begin using Habari Xenu all you need to do is:
If you prefer the full story to be opened in a new browser tab instead of a new window, all you have to do is Control+Click (Command+Click on Macs) on the headline if your browser's Tabbed Browsing is properly configured (See Edit -> Preferences -> Navigator -> Tabbed Browsing).
How does it work?
Many news sources, web sites and blogs these days are publishing a summary
of information on their site in the RSS format. RSS (or Really Simple
Syndication or Rich Site Summary) feeds are content feeds that contain
headlines, summaries and links to the full-text of the articles.
Whenever you come across an interesting news source that provides a feed in
RSS/RDF/XML format (usually indicated by the
icon), you can include
it in your list of chosen news souces by bookmarking it (and filing it into
a folder containing all your feeds). When you launch Habari Xenu, it
displays your news sources in the left hand side under 'Your
Subscriptions'.
When you click on a news source, Habari Xenu downloads the news feed, parses it and displays the headlines and summaries on the right hand side (It is actually a bit smarter than that. But for the purpose of this introduction that simplification will do). This enables you to quickly catch up with the headlines from your news source. If you are interested in reading any of the headlines in detail, click on the headline to go to your news source and read the full story.
What are RSS/RDF/XML news feeds?
RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites,
including major news sites like Wired, Washingon Post, BBC, news-oriented
community sites like Slashdot, Metafilter, and personal weblogs. But it's
not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into
discrete items can be syndicated via RSS.
This
article has much more information about RSS.
Where do I find some interesting feeds?
Habari Xenu comes with a sample bookmark file containing a list of
news feeds that its author finds interesting and amusing. All these
feeds are stored under a folder called 'Habari Xenu'. To start with
this list here is what you need to do:
What does the name Habari Xenu mean?
Habari Xenu is a traditional Kiswahili (commonly and incorrectly
called Swahili) greeting. Habari literally means 'news' and
Xenu is the plural form of 'your'. Saying Habari Xenu is
equivalent to greeting two or more of your friends with a "What's up?".
What is the response to the greeting?
The traditional response to the greeing is Nzuri ('good') or
Nzuri sana ('very good'). Kiswahili speakers never respond in the
negative to a greeting. If there is a drought, your maize crop has been
ravaged by locusts and your prize livestock that you have been saving for a
dowry have been eaten by a lion, the worst you can say is Hivi Hivi
('so-so').
Why the name Habari Xenu?
I fell in love with the Kiswahili language and Swahili culture while living
and working in Kenya as a volunteer. Choosing Habari as a name was
a no brainer. Because a News Aggregator gathers news from multiple
locations, I decided to use the plural form of the greeting. Besides, the
word 'xenu' is cool.
What does this software have to do with the Alien Galactic Ruler?
Nothing whatsoever. The Church of Scientology, on the other hand, has lots
to say about the Alien Glactic Ruler named Xenu. One of these days when
you have a lot of time on your hands and need a bit of cheering up, check
out Operation Clambake