[Hung Jung Lu, on Fri, 03 Mar 2000] :: But this problem seems to come up more and more often :: nowadays. Web browsers, being pure clients, are not :: good enough. What we want is some technology that implements :: servers on the user's end. Mini-servers, if you wish. :: Actually, I think this maybe a long term tendency: more :: and more mini-servers would be running on end-users' :: machines. Yes. The flip side of syndication is aggregation. Giving users the option of displaying just the granular, dynamically updatable information which interests them will be a Portal killer. Obviously, XML will be a major enabler of this. It's the return of Push Media, but based on open standards. :: That being said, it is actually not too hard to implement :: mini-servers with Python. An HTTP server that analyzes :: the URL (which might contain port number and form data, :: like http://your.machine.com:8088/?x=3&y=4) and displays :: a message box, probably would take about 30 to 40 lines :: of Python code. It'll even make a beep sound if you want. :) :: Quite a bargain. If you want to know more, I can say more, :: but it kind of depend on your configuration. :: :: Web browsers (HTTP clients) made a big impact on the :: way how people use computers. I believe that nowadays :: we also need some generic HTTP mini-servers so people :: can respond to outside events, there is a real need for :: this kind of products. The possibilities are endless. Well, this is obviously way off topic for this list, but it's a subject I find very compelling. Maybe those of us who are interested in pursuing a Python strategy for this should migrate it to an egroup or something?