Validate with RSS

Hey, this post is vintage content. It dates back more than 20 years ago: it may contain outdated and inaccurate information.

RSS (for those who are not familiar with it, I recommend the introduction by Cesare Lamanna on 4 Banalitaten, which goes straight to the point in 3 steps) ? was born in 1999 as a system to offer content channels, periodically updated and easily filterable by the user.

With RSS, today, many people have changed the way they use the web. One points out to the aggregator the sites that make the feed RSS available, asks it to keep an eye on them, and to alert you when something new happens. Simple. Checking a hundred sites every day becomes (almost) child's play.

However, what amazes me most about RSS are the 'unusual' purposes for which it is used. Usually RSS is used to make the contents of a site available. Today, however, I found this XHTML Validator to RSS, which allows you to validate a page from your aggregator: if the page is correct, nothing happens. But if something is wrong, every error is converted into a news item and then you have to do something about it...