Library clips

Blogs Trend Search at IceRocket.

This post has some great tools for easy right-click action.

Including:

del.icio.us
Right-click to add a bookmark of the page you are on
Right-click to go to a user account

Bloglines
Right-click to subscribe to the page you are on
Right-click to see references (link search) to the page you are on

Technorati
Highlight a word and right-click to search
Right-click to see references (link search) to the page you are on

Newsgator web-edition
Right-click to subscribe to the page you are on

According to this post and this post, you can get a similar tool for Furl, but I can’t find it anywhere.

[ADDED 23/06/05: I found it!]

Technorati tag searches for content that belongs within blog categories (it also aggregates categories or tags from several social bookmarking tools).

If you don’t have categories in your blog, you can create category tags for your post that Technorati can process…here is an explanation.

Another blog engine that can do this is Blogdigger

Just search with the prefix subject
Eg. Subject:library 495 hits

Here is the same search at Technorati:
Tag:library 522 hits from 87 blogs

Good thing about Technorati is that it lists related tags

Good thing about Blogdigger is that it generates an RSS feed, which Technorati is yet to do for tag searches

Try a precise search with Blogdigger

subject:library food
This finds all posts in the category labelled “library” that mentions the word “food”

subject:library AND subject:search
This finds all posts that have been categorised in multiple folders; with the label “library” and “search”.

subject:library AND subject:search AND academic
This finds all posts that have been categorised in multiple folders; with the label “library” and “search” and also the word “academic”

NOTE: searches were performed on 9/05/05.

Following on from my previous posts Automated Newsmastering and
Curating a clip blog

NOTE: I should use tagback for a space for these posts.

OPTIONS

1. Automated

• Re-syndicate a feed via RSS Digest into a Blog.

[ADDED 24/08/05: RSSDigest is now superseded by FeedDigest which can splice/mix feeds, and also filter feeds]

• But this is only re-syndicating one feed, you can mix lots of feeds into a mega-feed via a
  Blogdigger group feed, or via RSS Mix.
• You can also re-syndicate several feeds without mixing them into one feed via
  Superblog.
  Just to re-cap, this syndicates the content from multiple RSS feeds to automatically populate a blog…a superblog! This is like a blogdigger group but is a blog interface.

(once this is set up, you don’t have to do anything…it runs itself)

2. Semi-Automated

• Del.icio.us feeds via RSS Digest into a Blog, or Superblog or a Blogdigger Group

(not as automated as the first option; if you don’t populate your del.icio.us account, the blog, inturn won’t be populated)
You can also use multiple del.icio.us tags into one feed by using the “add” function in del.icio.us

3. Manual

• reBlog into a blog

(this is different as it isn’t being populated by RSS feeds, it is even more manual or more direct than option 2, as it’s manually clipping from an RSS reader into a blog)

• Bloglines clip blog

(this is different as it isn’t being populated by RSS feeds, as reBLog above, unless you use the Bloglines clip blog RSS feed via RSS Digest into a Blog, which would make it similar to option 2)

Category - Issue

Problem is I want the feeds to act as categories, when I click on a category I want the content to display in the blog.

This means that if I created a feed via a Feedster search query, I could put this URL on my sidebar as a category and label it as I please, I could also put an XML button next to it representing a category feed. When someone clicks on the category link it takes them to the Feedster website of that search query, or they can just subscribe to the category RSS feed.

Problem is I want to view this within the blog, I don’t want to have to go to the native site.

So if I used Superblog, and clicked on the category (eg. Feedster search query) on the side panel, this would go to the original site to view the contents, I want to view the contents within Superblog.

An added problem is clicking on a category in your blog that is made at RSS Mix won’t take you anywhere as the mixed content doesn’t live anywhere in a mixed form - ie. RSS Mix isn’t a database that stores content, it is just a tool to do the mixing.

Same thing goes, if you click on a category in your blog where the feed is made at PubSub.

Category - Solution

Blogdigger groups allows you to view category content within the Blogdigger group (you don’t have to go to the native site), which is cool, but then I like the presentation of Superblog as it is a typical blog format.

If Blogdigger groups future endeavours are to look more like a blog format with customised presentation, then this tool is my answer…just a waiting game.

A great example of this is LIS feeds…how do they do it?
But I want the side panel with all the feeds to stay there when you click on one.

NOTE: Sounds like what I want to make is more of an aggregator than a blog.

I suppose another similar option is a public version of a Bloglines account…if this could be customised to look like a blog that would be also an answer.

My ultimate goal in Newsmastering or a clipping service is to refine RSS feeds to a precise level that I no longer have to check the (content coming from the feeds) before it gets posted to a blog.

That is, you can now have a totally automated blog that is automatically curated according to the refined filtering of your RSS feeds.

If you do all the back-end work in manipulating the RSS feeds you no longer have to curate the blog or manually post; you as the infomediary can be taken out of the loop.

So the needs are:

• a blog that self-posts
• the posts are all relevant according to the purpose of your blog

Search the blogosphere

Depending on the scope and purpose of your blog you can generate search RSS feeds from the web via Blog/RSS engines, such as Bloglines, Blogdigger, Technorati (watch list), Feedster, PubSub, etc…as well as feeds from news, web searches, databases searches, etc..

Problem is that you will always get stuff you don’t want, that is, the content is as good as your search string. This margin of error is OK if you are only covering several feeds but if you are covering millions of sites (as these search engines do) well then the error will scale higher.

I guess you want your posts to be about the search term not just a fleeting mention of the term, it’s all about context.

This process is also OK if you are curating the content yourself, but if your blog posts are being automatically filled from these feeds then you will gets posts that may not belong in your blog.

It also depends on the integrity of your blog, if your intention is to only have a handful of totally relevant posts because your clients only devote 15 minutes reading time a day, then search engine results may not be the go (unless you are viewing the results and posting the content yourself – but our aim is all about automation). If your clients/users, people who will read your blog, don’t mind scanning heaps of posts (of which some may not be exactly relevant) and have the time to do this, well then that’s OK, as long as it serves your purpose.

Saying this, first try engines like PubSub, Feedster, and Blogdigger as they have great search command facilities.

Search a selection

So another option is to pick several feeds that are relevant to your blogs topic.

Since so much of the same information is re-published in lots of blogs you may only need to search a portion of the web. Also you don’t need to re-invent the wheel, you don’t need to scout various resources on the web on a particular topic if somebody already does this in another blog, their coverage and representation of a topic may be enough to re-publish on your blog.

Once you have found your relevant blogs or websites check if they have category or section RSS feeds, this may help to filter the content to your specific needs.

So now you can create various search feeds across your collection of blogs/feeds via Bloglines (search my subscriptions) or via a Blogdigger Group.

Or even better do this on a per feed basis.

Use Blogdigger to make a category feed of an individual RSS feed or even to make a search feed of an RSS feed, try both, make a feed where the search term appears in a category. Feedster can also generate search feeds on a per feed basis.

Once you have done this you can put all the feeds into RSS Mix and blend them into one feed.

Then repeat the process again, your blog may be about social software so you may have different topics like; blogs, social bookmarks, rss, wiki’s, etc…

Presentation

Once you have made all your topic RSS feeds from the RSS Mix blender then you need to put then somewhere.

Superblog is a unique blog that will automatically populate the content in your blog with the RSS feeds you place in it. (include as many as you like)
Blogdigger groups also does this, but it doesn’t have a blog interface look, it has more of an aggregator look.

You don’t have to use Superblog, you can use a tool like RSS Digest to convert the RSS to HTML as a way to present the RSS content into a blog platform of your choice. But it will only do this via one RSS feed, so you would have to put all your feeds into RSS Mix again to create on feed.

Another tool to mix feeds is Feedmarker, soon this aggregator will let you filter feeds on a per feed basis.

So there you have it an automatic blog with content that is precise and relevant, and you don’t have to do anything after the unveiling…it just works itself!

Of course nothing beats the precision of a manually curated blog, but then an automated blog can cover massive amounts of content that you just could not read and re-post in a day.