The breaking news today about a man, possibly connected with terrorism, being shot by police in London, sparked a thought about a possible use for RSS and Atom feeds: very short-lived feeds for breaking news.

My wife heard the initial news of the London incident on the radio, and I went to CNN.com to see if I could get more detail. Unfortunately, it's too early to have clear answers to the big questions--was this guy a terrorist? Did he have explosives under his unseasonably heavy coat? etc.

I could go back to CNN.com periodically until they get the whole story, but I won't--it's too much trouble given that I have no idea when they'll be updating their information. What I'd like to have seen was one of those orange XML buttons that I could use to subscribe to a feed that was updated with little bits of new information as CNN got them. Once the whole story was out, they could leave it there, unchanged, for the rest of the day, and then delete it.

If CNN wanted to put ads in the feed to pay for the bandwidth it would burn, I wouldn't complain.