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Habari Xenu - A Cool XUL News Aggregator |
What is Habari Xenu?
Habari Xenu is a News Aggregator that is built on top of the powerful
Mozilla web platform.
It runs on Mozilla
and Firefox web browsers.
What is a News Aggregator?
A News Aggregator is a program that periodically downloads the latest headlines
from your chosen news sources and displays them in one convenient place. It
enables you to glance at the latest headlines and gives you the ability to read
the full story behind those headlines that interest you. In conjunction with
Mozilla's tabbed browsing feature, a program like Habari Xenu helps you
quickly catch up with all the latest news from your favorite news sources.
How do I begin using it?
See seperate HOWTO document for usage instructions.
How does it work?
Many news sources, web sites and blogs these days are publishing a summary
of the information on their site in the RSS format. RSS (or Really Simple
Syndication or Rich Site Summary) feeds are content feeds that contain
headlines, summaries and links to the full-text of the articles.
Whenever you come across an interesting news source that provides a feed in
RSS/Atom format (usually indicated by the
icon), you can include
it in your list of chosen news souces by bookmarking it (and filing it into
a folder containing other feeds). When you launch Habari Xenu, it displays
your news sources in the left hand side under 'Your Subscriptions'.
When you click on a news source, Habari Xenu downloads the news feed, parses it and displays the headlines and summaries on the right hand side (It is actually a bit smarter than that. But for the purpose of this introduction that simplification will do). This enables you to quickly catch up with the headlines from your news source. If you are interested in reading any of the headlines in detail, click on the headline to go to your news source and read the full story.
What does the name Habari Xenu mean?
Habari Xenu (also spelled Habari Zenu) is a traditional
Kiswahili (commonly and incorrectly called Swahili) greeting.
Habari literally means 'news' and Xenu is the plural form
of 'your'. Saying Habari Xenu is equivalent to greeting two or
more of your friends with a "What's up?".
What is the Kiswahili response to the greeting?
The traditional response to the greeing is Nzuri ('good') or
Nzuri sana ('very good'). Kiswahili speakers never respond in the
negative to a greeting. If there is a severe drought, your maize crop has
been ravaged by swarms of locusts and the prize livestock that you have
been saving for a dowry have been eaten by a lion, the worst you can say
is Hivi Hivi ('so-so').
Why the name Habari Xenu?
I fell in love with the Kiswahili language and Swahili culture while teaching
in Kenya as a volunteer. Choosing Habari as a name was a no brainer.
Because a News Aggregator gathers news from multiple locations, I decided to
use the plural form of the greeting. Besides, the word 'xenu' sounds cool.
What does this software have to do with the Alien Galactic Ruler?
Nothing whatsoever. The Church of Scientology, on the other hand, has lots
to say about the Alien Glactic Ruler named Xenu. One of these days when
you have a lot of time on your hands and need a bit of cheering up, check
out Operation Clambake