magpiebrain

My morning routine before leaving for work goes a little something like this:

# Get up & dressed
# Wash
# Watch BBC Breakfast to see if aliens have landed
# Check the web for Underground news (“London Underground”:http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/)
# Check the weather (the “BBC”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml)
# Quickly scan mail to see if anything needs a reply before I leave (“Gmail”:http://www.gmail.com/)

Items 1 through 3 are just about as fine tuned as they get. Items 3-6 all involve looking at several different websites. None of them gets anything more than a passing glance, and it occurred to me that I could do with rolling them up into a single, very personal, portal. News from the BBC can be pulled in using RSS, and there are plenty of RSS weather feeds out there. Gmail would require getting hold of an API (there are plenty out there) and the tube news could be gotten using a screen scape. Then all there is to do is pull this together into a single CGI page (or more likely a Movable Type page) and password protect it. That said, it all seems like a lot of work – another for my endless “slack”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767907698/pd_ka_0/026-9145775-6311639 list I think.