Posts tagged as: feed

Dynamic reading lists just got easier to read

BlogBridge version 2.13 has just been released, making it a lot easier to view dynamic reading lists in OPML. It is free and supports Windows, Mac, and Linux. There are plenty of RSS aggregators that allow you to import OPML files as a quick way of subscribing to a large number of feeds, but these are basically a static form of subscription. BlogBridge, on the other hand, is able to stay in synch with the original OPML. If you subscribe to an OPML file on a server, and the contents of the file changes, then the set of feeds that show up in BlogBridge also changes. This is what separates a reading list from a regular OPML file. The internal format isn't different in a reading list, it is the fact that the contents of the file changes over time that makes an OPML file into a dynamic reading list.

It isn't completely obvious how to open an OPML file as a reading list in BlogBridge, as opposed to just subscribing to all of the file's feeds, so here are the basic steps:

1. Select 'Add Guide' from the Guides menu.
2. Enter a title for the new Guide.
3. Select the 'Reading List' tab.
4. Click the '+' button.
5. Enter the URL of a reading list. If you can't find one to try, you can get started with the one I have created based on Tech Memorandum.
6. Click 'Check and Add'.
7. Click 'Add'.
8. When the new Guide appears, all of the feeds listed in the reading list will be read, and the feed items will then appear.

By default, BlogBridge only checks for new contents in the reading list when it is first run. This is fine if you tend to start the program, read some feeds, and then close it. If you keep the program open, as I do, you will probably want to tell it to recheck the contents of the OPML regularly and resynch to match. This is done by:

1. Selecting 'Preferences' from the Tools menu.
2. Clicking the 'Reading Lists' tab.
3. Changing the 'Check for changed Reading Lists' setting to 'Once per Day' or 'Once per Hour.'

My enthusiasm on this subject has prompted some emails asking if I have a financial interest in promoting BlogBridge and reading lists, and the answer is no, although I am friends with Pito Salas, BlogBridge's project leader. I am actively looking for other aggregators that support OPML reading lists, so if you know of one, let me know about it and I'll be glad to write it up. I've said before that I believe RSS is a key component of the Web's future growth, and OPML reading lists are a great way of delivering RSS.

I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more feeds!

I've been accused of being obsessive, but I can't help it. I gotta have more feeds. This whole subject of real-time feed aggregation, or feed grazing as it's now being called, has really caught my imagination. So I've been looking for something that will cure my fever. I haven't found an aggregator that will satisfy my craving completely, but there are a number of websites that demonstrate the type of interface I need. I'll list them in the hopes that someone will build an OPML capable aggregator with this type of presentation:

• AliveNews has a cool realtime display, but it must be a proof of concept rather than a real site, because it doesn't have any options for expanding the list of pre-defined feeds. Still, the fade-in of feed excerpts is sweet.
• Digg spy is really compelling for the ADD set, but it isn't a true feed aggregator, and it makes me twitch if I watch it for too long.
• LiveMarks by Alex Bosworth applies a different take on this type of presentation to Delicious bookmarks. (via ProgrammableWeb)

Exemplars everywhere I turn

I didn't get a chance to keep up with my feeds yesterday, so this morning I sat down with a bulging RSS reader. Yummy! I didn't get past the As before I hit what everyone would have to accept as a perfect example of a Web 2.0 application, Amazon's Mechanical Turk. I decided to list every blog post I read in my morning review that points to such an exemplar:

• Mechanical Turk, this site provides an economic model for a global, microcontent focused workforce.
• AjaxTrans, Ajax powered simultaneous translator page.
• Riya, "extracting value from user-generated content and rewarding the 'long tail.'".
• Evil Search Engines, thoughts about the effect of Google on Hollywood. (via John Battelle)
• Technorati Icon, Dave adds an automated vanity search to his navbar. Well, I guess that is more timeless than Web 2.0.
• Writely, a web-based Word competitor with "import and export into Word format, embedded images, a wysiwyg editor, drag and drop functionality, sharing with others, and tagging of documents."
• Protopage, an Ajax driven personal page.
• Last.fm, a social recommendation system for music.
• Finally, to really prove my point Dion Hinchcliffe has a round-up of his favorite Web 2.0 apps of 2005.

The next time I find myself unable to explain what Web 2.0 is, I'll just point to this post.

Seeing a website as an RSS feed

I've been thinking about rebuilding the architecture and some of the design of this site to adopt to tags and XML. I'm starting to see the site as a large feed reader for my own content. The intruiging part is that if I rebuild this site to work directly off of my RSS feed then it will work on anyone's feed. The site becomes simply a database app for a standard type of data. I've always thought as websites as the result of database programs, but the more I grok RSS as a delivery and storage mechanism the more opportunities I see for working with it as the core architectural structure rather than an export or import protocol. Hopefully these ideas will become more clear as I build the next iteration of this site.

The future RSS scandals

How do we know the origin of a blog posting after it leaves its author's website? If combining a collection of posts, remixing them based on an algorithm or community assesment, and distributing them as a new RSS feed is the model we are ready to embrace, how do we detect and prevent the inevitable fraud? For example, how do I know a map mashup that claims to be delivering an unbiased search engine's results combined with a map isn't actually eliminating selected matches for profit, censorship, or malice? How do I know if a news item with the URL of a famous news source is real or a press release if I don't get it from the new source's site. Of course we've had feeds for years, but after several layers of remixing, the purity of the stream is going to be questionable.

2006: The Year the Web Explodes

Once I get past the annoyance at Google for dribbling out Googlebase in such a piecemeal fashion, I can see a much larger consequence than the simple issue of features within Googlebase itself. They have accelerated existing forces that will blow the web apart within the next 6 to 8 months. It is no coincidence that just as I'm thinking about Google's RSS reading database I'm also working to make my blogs able to deliver their content as customized RSS feeds on demand.

The explosion I am talking about is the shifting of a website's content from internal to external. Instead of a website being a "place" where data "is" and other sites "point" to, a website will be a source of data that is in many external databases, including Google. Why "go" to a website when all of its content has already been absorbed and remixed into the collective datastream.

So why the hyperbole? Haven't sites been publishing RSS feeds for years? Yes, but those feeds only included recent items. Google wants ALL of our data. If websites now start leaving all their content outside their internal database for anyone to collect, the data will propagate and then morph into a different web from what we have now.