Cataloguing Solaris groups

Question

I created an OPML file of major Solaris discussion groups
that provide RSS feeds. (An OPML file is a standard file
format for sharing lists of RSS feeds such as BLOGs. More
on this later.) It can be downloaded here:
    http://www.speakeasy.org/~boutilier/import.xml
This is part of my attempt to start maintaining a list of
"active" English-language Solaris groups and their attributes. I've
defined "active" to mean groups that have, on average, at least a few
messages posted per day (i.e. minimum 20 msgs per week). Following
are the ones I know of. Please let me know if I've missed any.
Name                  Traffic    Native Format      RSS Feed?
comp.unix.solaris     Very high  Usenet Newsgroup    Yes
solarisx86@yahoo      High       Mail-list           Yes
sunmanagers.org       Med        Mail-list           Yes
supportforum.sun.com  Med        Browser-only        Yes
forum.sun.com         Med        Browser-only         Soon
ITtoolbox solaris-l   Low        Mail-list            No
Key:
  Very high ~=  500 - 700 msgs per week
  High      ~=  300 - 500    "
  Medium    ~=  100 - 300    "
  Low       ~=   20 - 100    "
[ Posting note: The above tables don't format properly when this message
is posted on forum.sun.com -- even though I used the `code' formatting tag ]
Although there are 6 groups in the list above, two of them don't
provide RSS feeds yet, therefore they aren't included in the
OPML file. Also, one of the RSS feeds in the file is not actually
a discussion group, it's a site that does on-the-fly aggregation of
blog entries on planetsun.org that contain the word Solaris. (The URL
for browsing the site is http://test.planetsun.com/solaris.)
=== Run-on message alert ===
The rest of this message contains some findings,
recommendations, and how-to info on the subject of RSS/OPML.
=== End Run-on message alert ===
Personally, I have an account on bloglines.com for reading RSS
feeds.  There are two really good things about Bloglines: It's
free, and it's easy for RSS newbies (like me) to get up and running
quickly. But Bloglines is web-based, and that makes it kinda slow
and klunky. So I actually recommend using a regular RSS reader app;
and since there are a lot of those out there, I went ahead and did
some "comparison shopping" on places like freshmeat.net. These are
the ones (for UNIX/Linux desktops) that piqued my interest the
most:
- Snownews:
  http://kiza.kcore.de/software/snownews
- RSSOwl
  http://rssowl.sourceforge.net
- Sage
  http://sage.mozdev.org/
- Thunderbird and Mozilla also added RSS capabilities recently, but
  I think they lack a lot of features (like importing OPML files) that
  are standard with dedicated RSS readers and the bloglines service.
To import the OPML file into a bloglines account, click on:
  My Feeds (tab near the top left corner)
    Edit (just under the tabs)
      Import Subscriptions (bottom of page)
To import it into RSSOwl, see:
http://rssowl.sourceforge.net/tutorial/en/ht_eximprint.html
To import it into Snownews, see:
http://kiza.kcore.de/software/snownews/download/patches/opml2snow
Here are a couple excellent (and short) articles on RSS:
Why is RSS Everywhere?
    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/start.html?pg=7
Getting Started with RSS: The Fifteen-Minute Tutorial
    http://frl.bluehighways.com/frlarchives/000123.html
And finally, if you like reading specs, here's the one for OPML:
    http://opml.scripting.com/spec
Eric Boutilier
Sun Microsystems
Operating Platforms Group

Answer 1

If you're interested in tracking this project see:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/eric_boutilier/20041222#em_b_this_is_a