Dave Winer has been working on an OPML editing environment. He’s made it available for download now. As a Manila and Radio user from a couple years back, it definitely feels like it is derived from the Frontier code base.
Three cheers, Dave. I appreciate everything that this piece of software represents. It’s a platform that provides the ability to outline, share outlines, run a weblog, publish RSS including podcasts, manage RSS subscriptions, and build a variety of other things upon.
However, it’s not a usable piece of software. It does many things, and underneath the hood likely does them well and elegantly. But it’s not really designed for users who don’t care about the technology. If you’ve lived the last 3–8 years inside Frontier’s outliner, it’s probably a comfortable place. For the rest of us… yuk.
Dave readily admits that it’s a technology demonstration, and a technology to change the way we thing, work, and web. But – while I am still somewhat of a technologist – I’d really just like a nice outliner that had a modern, highly functional, clean UI and did a bunch of this stuff completely behind the scenes. I want its power, but I don’t want to interact with the power directly.
So, my basic message is this: Great job, Dave. Now I’ll wait for someone like Dmitry Chestnykh (of BlogJet fame) or Ranchero (NetNewsWire and MarsEdit) to develop a usable tool on top of the technology.
