Within my Jetspeed project (java.apache.org/jetspeed) I am making heavy
use of content syndication.  I am taking RSS and Portlets (a Portlet is
a Jetspeed server side content Java control) and allowing syndication of
this content to multiple transports (AvantGo, Mozilla, e-mail, GNOME
taskbar, etc).  The problem is that content syndication isn't really
content syndication.

What I mean is that a lot of sites (about 50%) are only syndicating
their headlines, mostly HREFs.  For most content (e-mail, taskbar,
AvantoGo, WAP) this isn't any good.  Why?  These are thin clients that
can't really render complex HTML and if they could either don't have the
space (my PalmV is only 2"x2" and my cell phone is even smaller) or
don't lend themselves to complex content generation.

If anyone has used the AvantGo service with the Palm or WinCE (or
whatever MS is now calling it) there is some very rich content here. 
You can get an overview of the content (which would be RSS in my
example) and then when you click on the link you get the full article.  

The problem is that the full article is meant to run on a modern browser
like IE or Netscape and doesn't look right on this small device.  So
what is needed is a content cleansing mechanism that removes all the
junk in an complex HTML document and just displays the content.

So for example:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/05/18/shuttle.01/index.html

Is a *very* complex URL.  There are 4 "toolbars" of content, north,
south, east, west.  In the middle of all of this clutter is a nice clean
column of text which is the real meat of the document.  So what I want
to do is get a Servlet and rip out all of the clutter (this would be
somewhat easy) and then just display the content.

When I replicate Jetspeed (and Portlets and RSS) to my PalmV then I
should be able to view the RSS and then read the article.  The article
would be generated from a Servlet that would be given a param to the
original source.

Thoughts?  What is the legality here?  Technically it wouldn't be used
to rip out advertisements but to only display this content to devices
that couldn't originally see it anyway.

Kevin

-- 
Kevin A Burton ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://relativity.yi.org
Message to SUN:  "Please Open Source Java!"
I just patented "one click e-mail", when you hit the "reply" button you 
own me 50 cents.


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