Apr
11
2004

the story evolves

I’ve recently become a fan of RSS newsreaders, programs that download and process the XML newsfeeds provided by a variety of weblogs and news sites. With the newsreader, I can see the most up-to-date stories/posts without having to navigate to each site, one-by-one.

The particular newsreader I use, NetNewsWire (for Mac), offers an option where users can see the differences between different versions of a given post. Particularly when it comes to news, it is interesting to see the revisions that take place as editors reconsider wording or focus, or as the story changes altogether. Take this example from the washingtonpost.com RSS feed:

Washington Post RSS example

On Friday, I found an even more striking example at MacMegasite, as the news of a computer virus written for Macs evolved from the virus being an actual virus, to the “virus” being more of an illustration of a Mac vulnerability, rather than an actual virus.

Posted at 7:53 PM in online news, technology

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