Library clips

BlogBridge has to be a cutting edge RSS reader, as soon as a new concept is emerging they are on the forefront to experiment and deliver (they don’t stand back and watch others succeed or fail).

Anyway they are well on the way to delivering OPML reading lists.
In their words:
“A Reading List is a collection of Feeds maintained by one party for the benefit of another”

I really like the control a user has over the current status of a reading list, see the screenshot.

In essence this means you can subscribe to a dynamic OPML file that lives elsewhere, any changes made to this file will be reflected in your version, the great thing, as mentioned, is that you will have some form of notification or status of the reading list.

Simply put Gather seems to be a blogsonomy, a place where you can have your own generic blog within a folksonomy environment…ok, it isn’t your own blog, but more a space to publish articles, eg. someones published articles…here is their user space, where it also shows recent articles, comments, connections, and subscriptions.

Also to note is that each article you publish has it’s own permalink (this is an important aspect of a blogsonomy)

So you can publish articles (file in a system category and apply personal tag/s), comments on articles, and apply ratings to articles.

Here’s what you see in aggregation:

Recent articles

Browse by topic (eg. here’s the category “Movies & Films”)

Tags (eg. here’s the tag “blog”)

Ratings

Rankings
- Top tags: most viewed, most commented on, most used (this last one is a weighted tag list, not quite a tag cloud)
- Top articles: most read, highest rated, most commented on
- Top contributors: most read, highest rated, most articles, comments written, comments received, namespace views

So as you can see there is a lot of ways at looking at the aggregated data, just the way we love it.

Here is a page that aggregates some of this stuff:

Editor’s pick
Top rated articles
Most read authors
Top Tags
Popular comments
Recent comments

When you view an item, you can click on the title to take you to the permalink, subscribe to the author (have to be logged in), view the ratings, view and click on the tag/s, view and click on the category/s, view the comments (and click to the user account of a commentor)…you can also give a rating, make a comment.

You have to be logged in to make comments, apply ratings, even subscribe, so this makes this a very enclosed system…this may not suit some web2.0 users, as many of us like being part of a community without being locked in or locked out.

Only thing missing for me is a tag cloud, and RSS feeds:

- lacks a general feed
- lacks general tag feed
- lacks a user feed
- lacks viewing tags or categories at the user level also no feed
(this would be like viewing a blogs category archives)

In all this is a great attempt at a blog folksonomy, for those who don’t want the hassle of having their own proper blog. I really like the many ways that you can look at the aggregtated data, only if there was RSS notification.

Actually I don’t see why the user page can’t be an actual blog presentation (with a sidebar to add your links, blogroll, etc)…even though it would have a generic display as it is part of a folksonomy.

Diggdot.us shows the latest results from digg, slashdot, and del.icio.us popular all in the one running list.

Another way around this is to splice a feed from all 3 services, and take out the duplications, and whack that in your RSS reader.

You could even re-syndicate this spliced feed into a blog, such as Suprglu and make the same thing as Diggdot.us.
NOTE: this works better with the pre-spliced feed (as it has been de-duplicated), you could, just add all 3 feeds straight into Suprglu, although the contents wouldn’t be de-duped, so you are better off running it through Feed Digest first…and of course you don’t have to display the contents in Suprglu you can output the spliced feed in HTML to any blog you like.

You could also display the contents in a Blogdigger group or kickRSS.

[via Techcrunch]

Described as a newsonomy, Newsvine is a news engine where the user (via a bookmarklet) can tag a news page, leave a comment, and give a rating…they also mention that you can write an item (with your name as part of the URL, so this is some sort of blogging space)

So not only do the users submit a news article (or write their own) with commentary and tags, they also apply ratings, so this is a truly social news site in all respects…more than wikinews.

A similar social news tool is Digg (comments, ratings, tags)…another is CommonTimes, which I would say is definitely a newsonomy.

And more Gabbr, Plastic, Newsback.

Some are saying that this is not a new thing, it’s been done before…this is true to an extent, but NewsVine could take it to a mainstream level, all these others are great, especially CommonTimes, but none so far have made it to the lay persons heart, if NewsVine have the right marketing team they could lead the way.

We really need to be able to pass around packets of feeds in an OPML file…it is inevitable that most RSS readers will allow you to:
- tag feeds in multiple folders/tags
- RSS feed for each folder/tag
- OPML file for each folder/tag
- RSS feed for your whole account
- OPML file for your whole account

Bloglines only allows you to file a feed in one folder, and only your whole account has an OPML file…very limiting.

Feedmarker allows you to file or tag feeds in folders/tags and each tag has an OPML file…Rojo does the same, and allows you to export an OPML file by folder/tag, so these 2 RSS readers are in the lead (not sure if other RSS readers on the market also have these features).

This is great as you can make loads of OPML files from the one account.
The other great thing is tagging feeds into multiple tags…reason being is that you may want a feed to appear in 2 or more OPML files.
eg. you may have a library feed in your “library” tag/folder, but you may want to also have it in your “must read essentials” tag/folder…this is a limitation with Bloglines. By having a feed in 2 folders/tags they can be made available in 2 different OPML files.

So you can make these various OPML files straight from your RSS reader, this is a bonus as you are managing your feeds anyway, so tagging and folder/tag OPML files made available in some RSS readers make this a convenient process.

A tool such as RSSor (a folksonomy for feeds) could definitely be in the market store OPML files for RSS feeds…so could a similar service like aggRSSive (this seems to be ahead of Feed Digest as not only can you splice feeds but you can share them in a simple folksonomy environment, Feed Digest also lacks OPML output).

Of course you can make OPML file’s of your favourite feeds other ways (Blogdigger groups, OPML manager, etc…) but what is great about making them from an RSS reader, is that you probably already manage your feeds in an RSS reader, if the folders/tags you manage your feeds in have an OPML file, well, then your work is already done…and if you want a feed to appear in multiple OPML files, well, the ability to tag your feeds allows this, and avoids the need to make new folders to create a new OPML file.

FeedDemon is going a step further and adding notions of “attention data” to an OPML file.
From the post:
“We need a way to rank feeds that makes sense across aggregators, so that when you export OPML from one aggregator, the aggregator you import into would know which feeds you’re paying the most attention to. This could be used for any number of things - recommending related feeds, giving higher ranked feeds higher priority in feed listings, etc.”