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.

What is a News Aggregator?
A News Aggregator is a program that periodically downloads the latest news 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 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?
Habari Xenu uses a folder your in bookmarks to store and manage its news sources. To begin using Habari Xenu all you need to do is:

1. Create a folder titled 'Feeds' or 'News Sources' (name it whatever you like) in your bookmarks. We will refer to this folder as your 'Feeds Root'.
2. Add bookmarks pointing to your favorite RSS/RDF/XML news sources under this folder.
3. Go to Habari Xenu ->Settings..., select the 'Feeds Root' folder you created earlier (Step 1) and click OK.

You will see your news sources listed in the left side (Your Subscriptions box). Click on the news source you are interested in. The program will display the latest headlines fetched from that news source on the right side. When you find a headline that piques your interest just click on the headline to get the full story displayed in new window.

If you prefer the full story to be opened in a new browser tab instead of a new window, all you have to do is Control+Click (Command+Click on Macs) on the headline if your browser's Tabbed Browsing is properly configured (See Edit -> Preferences -> Navigator -> Tabbed Browsing).

How does it work?
Many news sources, web sites and blogs these days are publishing a summary of 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/RDF/XML 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 all your 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 are RSS/RDF/XML news feeds?
RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, Washingon Post, BBC, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, Metafilter, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS. This article has much more information about RSS.

Where do I find some interesting feeds?
Habari Xenu comes with a sample bookmark file containing a list of news feeds that its author finds interesting and amusing. All these feeds are stored under a folder called 'Habari Xenu'. To start with this list here is what you need to do:

1. Open the sample bookmarks file in a new window.
2. Switch to the newly opened window and save it to a file (File -> Save Page As).
3. Go into Bookmarks Manager (Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks).
4. Import it into your bookmarks (Tools -> Import... and select the file you saved in Step 2).
5. Go to Habari Xenu ->Settings..., select 'Habari Xenu' folder as your 'Feeds Root'.

What does the name Habari Xenu mean?
Habari Xenu 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 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 drought, your maize crop has been ravaged by locusts and your 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 living and working 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' is 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