Strip the web of all the graphics, all the CSS, and all the AJAX, and you’re left with a list of things, their detail information, and the forms to add more items to the list.

RSS is the list. The web browser is simply a presentation of it. Same as my feed aggregator, my email client, and my instant messaging client.

As such, the list as RSS should come first, it’ll be needed anyway, with all the various presentations simply parsing it out. The RSS file is the molecule of the internet, made up of atoms, er, items.

To add to the list, Web Services. The create, read, update, delete functions offered through web services are always needed by Web developers. Seems like the site itself should simply be another customer of its web services.