Syndicating Website Updates

Several good websites just don't have the latest technology, e.g.: News Releases page of National Ignition Facility web page doesn't have RSS feed. Yet, they have the biggest laser gun that you want to pay attention to.

Kephra is another editor written in Perl and wxPerl, it is very promising project, but it still doesn't have the major functionality that I want: folding. I need to monitor the updates from time to time.

Knowing me, I'll forget to visit them later in the future.

Enter getNews.pl.

Currently the script downloads those two web pages, parse the news section for updates and send it to my GMail account. There are several reasons why it has to go to GMail:

1. Google Reader for Mobile (GRfM) on BlackBerry is web based application, extremely slow to skip junks.
2. GRfM is build on GWT framework: the URL of all anchors begins with http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=[URL encoded URL]. It is extremely messy and unusable when I want to email it and save the URL to delicious later.
   
3. GMail client on BlackBerry is well suited for quick feed browsing (it supports short cuts), except it suffers at displaying web content: it doesn't display format, image and anchor (let along embedded web content), but it does recognize URL in plain text and anchor it.
4. GMail has been my premier to do list, I just star the item as a reminder to delicious it - yumm.