Tag Archives: google

RSS Feeds via Javascript

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I set about recently to try to get a RSS feed parsed using only Javascript. Not as easy as I had thought it would be. I had figured that there would be several Javascript library’s around, and I thought for sure that someone would have a jQuery plugin for it. Well, I did find jFeed, but it suffers from a rather large issue. It can’t access sites from a different domain from where it is running. This is really a Javascript security feature. I did a simple AJAX test, and sure enough, Javascript stops us from directly accessing another domain (to prevent cross site scripting attacks).

How do you get around this issue? Well, a php based proxy is one solution. You call via AJAX, this php file that then makes the request to the real feed, and sends it back. That didn’t seem like a simple or elegant enough solution.

I found RssToHtml, which is a PHP script that you can use the parse the RSS feed. Using this, you can even use an server side¬†include to get the feed. This¬†didn’t work on my machine¬†that would only¬†run cgi scripts from the include.¬†

I had just about given up when I stumbled upon the Google AJAX Feed Api. Google to the rescue again.
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T-Mobile selling the G1

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I saw my first add for T-Mobile’s G1 yesterday. The Google Android based phone has it’s own site now. On T-Mobile’s site you can currently buy one for $179 after a $200 rebate. (How do you give a rebate for your own hardware?) Last week Google officially liberated the source code. Here are some other pre release opinions. So now that it is live, how does it compare to the iPhone? Well, it sacrifices some size to a real keyboard that would be helpful to those that text a lot I am sure. Inclusion of a microSD is a great plus, but it appears to be limited to 8gig. The phone is still sim locked, and doesn’t appear to have a sync application. This is interesting. It is dependent on, and expects you to use Gmail and other Google apps. I am not sure I like this. I haven’t drunk the Google cool aid yet. I have a gmail account, but I still like desktop apps. If I could get my address book, calendar and mail to sync with Google’s offerings, then maybe it would work. Maybe I just need to give into the idea of cloud computing more. I think I will stand back and see how the next few months play out. The platform being more open than Apple’s should allow developers to create some interesting things. It will be worth watching.