Python power
Sam Ruby’s ultra-simple 3-paned aggregator is a great example of the power of high level scripting languages. Using the wxPython cross-platform GUI toolkit and Mark Pilgrim’s ultra-liberal RSS Parser it provides a full application in a mere 107 lines of (highly readable and maintainable) code.
Linked to from Sam’s comments are Mark Pilgrim’s thoughts on OPML from April last year. I’m not too keen on OPML’s “invent attributes as you need them” attitude but I am intrigued by Dave Winer’s thoughts on using OPML as the basis for a massive, distributed directory of the web—a sort of decentralised dmoz.