Question: Does NewsTopica have this feature....

[nate_king1]

Does NewsTopic have the feature where it can get pictures from the news source to put it on the page? It would be really cool if it did, or maybe you should work on that for the next verison. Anywya I'm about to purchase it...

[David]

Generally speaking, the answer is yes.
There are a lot of feeds that can be parsed in a way where the images are included in the displayed result. What I am doing right now in 2.0 (has been a little slow), is finding ways to increase compatability with more feeds. Already, most work right now, but I am trying to do even better. For example, Atom feeds are more complex than RSS and often include html, so they are much more complex when it comes to parsing.

[nate_king1]

Okay Great, Also do you have a search feature? Similar to Topix.net where you can search for "Business" or "ZipCode"?

[David]

Well, the search feature is just like phpLD.
So whatever is in the database is saercheable.
I hope that answers your question.

[nate_king1]

Maybe soon you can be working on making the news similar to Topix.net in that you can search by Zip Code. Also maybe that users can signup and add their own RSS/XML feeds for personalization, that would awesome! Thanks..

Btw I still need my Article Script that I bought yesturday, please read my e-mail.

[David]

I sent the article script to you another way.

The stuff you bring up about NewsTopica would involve quite a bit more work. Do you know anything about how they decide what to display for a given zip code? What are they searching for in the database?

[nate_king1]

My guess is it searches for the city the zip code is mapped too. Basically if you give me zipcode XXXX it searches for the city name XXXXXXXXXX. I'm guesssing...

Anyway if there is a way that you can make once I get the Site going using script with 1000 of feeds. Anyway that I can pull XML results for a search. Like I ahve two sites....

Site A - Holds the database of News Site B - Pulls Site's A database and displays it on site B


XML feed

[David]

I've done a number of applications that use cross referencing of zip code with city, but where the logic is a little shaky for me is when are deciding how a given rss feed or listing corresponds to a location.

Looking at topix.net, it appears they are adding a field for zip code and city to each rss feed that is a "local news source".

I know I could do this sort of project, but I think topix.net has a huge investment in time and money into their site. It will take many man hours of content gathering and programming.

NewsTopica may one day be ready to go head to head with Topix.net, but it will take some devoted people. :)

[nate_king1]

Okay sounds fine. But can the pictures work or not? I'm wasn't getting a straight answer? Is it based on only the type of feed RSS or can your script do the job?

[David]

If the news source provides pictures as part of the feed, the answer is yes. Atom feeds often do this. Check this out:
http://www.newstopica.com/demo2/index.php?c=5

[nate_king1]

GREAT! Also is this possible. To be running the script on mysite.com/news/ and on the homepage to give like 5 conintuously updating news? So it will be pulling the data from the script hosted on mysite.com/news?

[David]

GREAT! Also is this possible. To be running the script on mysite.com/news/ and on the homepage to give like 5 conintuously updating news? So it will be pulling the data from the script hosted on mysite.com/news?

With a small amount of coding, yes.
Would just need to use the code from one of your xml buttons.